


Excused Absences

by Carbocat



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe - High School, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Not Episode 02x17: Melinda Compliant, Panic Attacks, Parent Nick Fury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-05-09 22:16:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 60,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14724584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: Nick Fury was a foster parent and a principal, so it was safe to say he knew kids. Nick Fury was also a skilled and experienced ex-soldier and a retired spy, and he knew that if there was a child’s picture in a redacted S.H.I.E.L.D. file than everything had already gone to hell.





	1. Back in the Day

**Author's Note:**

> So, so much backstory. Bear with me, there was a lot of world building to set up this AU, things get better once the ball starts rolling. I actually started writing this about halfway through season two, stopped working on it, and decided to brush it off because I wrote so much for it already.

Everything started with a card.

Almost a post card but neither glossy or big enough, an unconventional business card of sorts, thick white paper sent through the mail without postage or a return address. No name penned into the corner, just _Fury, Nicholas J_ and a series of numbers in faded ink. There was nothing else.

He had initially thrown the card in the trash but curiosity killed that damn cat and it’d kill him too.

Nick had been a young and stupid Literature major with a scholarship to NYU. He’d had a knack for trouble and where to find it, and he’d had nothing better to distract him from writing a paper on postcolonial discourse in modern literature than a mysterious card in the mail. He’d just been a kid that was up for a challenge, that’d watched too many spy flicks and owned a mysterious business card. And, he just really didn’t want to write that paper.

 _Coordinates_ , he realized.

After a few hours, a book of maps, a comic that wasn’t his, and the realization that the list of numbers was encoded using an old Allies code presented in the first edition of Captain America and the Howling Commandos comic book. A time, a date, and coordinates that led directly to the campus bookstore.

Specifically, with the use of a compass and too much wasted time, he knew the exact coordinates of the only red chair in the sitting area of the bookstore.

He threw the card in the trash.

That was it – the beginning of his very end.

When everything laid shattered and broken at his feet, when he was left to pick up too many pieces, he’d be able to trace it all back to a mysterious white card with coordinates to a campus bookstore and the stupid childish impulse to not leave well enough alone.

There were cons and there were cons that were long, that lead to destruction and certain death for all parties involved, or at least something as equally inconvenient. These kinds of things had a way of starting with something that seemed harmless, trivial and a little fun, and so vastly unimportant in comparison to due dates and finals.

You don’t realize the gravity until you’re sucked into its’ orbit.

He should have left it at that, the code within the code that told of a meet time and date. All he had wanted to do was just figure it out and move on with his life but he still found himself standing in the middle of the crowded store on a Tuesday afternoon.

He stood back, standing in the stacks between physic and philosophy books, and watched the red chair. He was curious, not a fool.

It could have been a prank, a set-up, or maybe some kind of trap. Nick did not have the best track record with making friends and he’d made his fair share of enemies. He didn’t have enough to work with to sit himself out in the open so he waited and hid out of sight, and he watched.

His grandfather had always told him that his curiosity would get him into trouble, that his willingness to not back down from a challenge would end him up in hot water or worse, a grave. But really, it was just that which got the attention of Margaret Carter.

 _Peggy_ , she called herself in a voice as warm as melting chocolate from just over his shoulder. Nick had spun – he’d remembered that moment because he’d never spun before, no one had ever got the drop on him until that moment. She’d smiled, more for pride than greeting, and stuck out a hand.

She was an older woman in her mid-forties, he though, graying at the temple but doing so gracefully. Pretty and stylish with a stance that was all too telling that she was no professor – _military_ , if Nick had to guess. It was her eyes that was most captive, guarded but telling of unspoken stories that he could not begin to imagine.

He returned her handshake, nodded when she inquired, “Nicholas Fury, Nick, I presume. You were waiting.”

“I don’t remember mentioning my name, ma’am.”

“No, you didn’t,” She replied before tilting her head towards the chair. “You cracked the code.”

“It was an old Howling Commandos code,” He told her, there was no pride in his voice. It was as firm and formal as her own, it was fact that he was stating. “It was printed in a Captain America comic book, wasn’t that hard to find.”

“A needle in a stack of needles,” She said, the barest hint of a smile was the only giveaway that she was impressed. “What is hidden in plain sight is often the hardest to find.”

 “Tell me,” He said, arms crossed over his chest, “What is the likes of Peggy Carter doing harassing me in the campus bookstore?”

It was a full smile that time, showing off pretty white teeth, and she laughed with an ease of someone among friends. She made him an offer. An opportunity like no other. An opportunity of a lifetime.

The opportunity of a lifetime, as it turned out, was not cozy beach trips or Parisian summer adventures. It was the honor and _privilege_ – the same was it was a privilege not to be brutally murdered – of being groomed into something better, to fight for something more. The privilege of a shortened lifespan for people that looked at you and decided your sacrifice was worth it.

 _Conditioning_ , she had called it, training. For the military, combat and intelligence gathering, for _spying_ for S.H.I.E.L.D. and protecting those that couldn’t.

She told him that somebody that was clever enough and determined enough to figure out the code, that stood there and talked to her as an equal and demanded he be taken as the same was perfect for her organization. She told him that somebody with his intellectual skills – both in class and on the street – and confidence showed a promise that she saw in very little.

He had narrowed his eyes and asked if she had been spying on him. She had raised an eyebrow back and told him with an unreadable amusement that the government was always watching. She told him that she admired his skills. He told her he was going to class.

Nick was no stranger to the military and organizations like she described. He was a son of an Air Force pilot and he’d lost his father in all the ways that counted to the horrors of that war. He had no intention of following those footsteps.

What he had was a five year plan that ended with writing for the New York Times; S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t factor into that at all.

He told Peggy that, and the guy in the S.H.I.E.L.D. issued jacket on the street that had repeated the offer to him, but in a less polite way.

It was starting to become annoying.

 

He was being followed, he knew it.

He didn’t have to turn around to know, a quick glance in the glass of a passing shop window or the mirror of a parked car told him that the guy in the black sunglasses and the ‘I-pay-more-for-my-haircut-than-you-do-in-rent’ haircut had been following him since he’d split from his roommate, Red, three blocks ago.

And really, _really_ , it was _dark_.

Could he look any more conspicuous? The slap of his expensive leather shoes, too expensive for this part of Hell’s Kitchen, was too loud, too close to be trailing somebody on a nearly empty street.

At this point, Nick was sure that Peggy was sending halfwits to follow him just to get on his nerves.

He took a sharp turn into an ally, sped up and then disappearing from view until he launched himself out from behind a dumpster and slammed the shitty spy so hard into the wall that his sunglasses hit the asphalt. He was even wearing a S.H.I.E.L.D. pin on his jacket.

“Why are you following me?” He demanded, absolutely _done_ with this whole charade. He was done with the following and Peggy Carter, with _all of it_.

The guy offered him a deal.

If Nick beat him in a boxing match at the gym he was heading too then they’d all back off. If he lost, he’d sign up for S.H.I.E.L.D.

Nick took the deal.

Twenty-six minutes later, he told the guy to fuck off.

And that was _that_. Or well, that should have been _that_ but then…

 

“I signed up for the army.”

It was said with the passing of a ham and cheese sandwich and all the nonchalance of someone who did not have a fucking clue of the severity of what they’d just did.

“What the fuck?”

“Well, not the _army_ , army but like, some strategic planning place,” Red said, sitting down across from Nick before tucking into his own sandwich. “The spiel sounded a lot like the army recruiter one though.”

Nick was not in the habit of making friends, naturally suspicious of everybody and a no-nonsense attitude made it a bitch to keep people coming around but Red was the exception to that. Nick _liked_ Red.

Red Hargrove was a goofy business major with a sad attempt of the Beatles’ hairdo and the coordination of an idiot. Nick had met him during freshman year orientation when Red’s big mouth got the best of him and Nick stood between him and the possibility of losing his front teeth. They had remained friends for reasons Nick never truly understood.

He rolled his eyes at Nick’s raised eyebrow.

“This woman, okay,” He began, talking around a bite of a peanut butter and banana sandwich. “Old but seriously, really pretty, right? And she’s talkin’ to me about the military, uh, S.H.I.E.L.D. or S.W.O.R.D. or something, I dunno. It appealed to me.”

“Well, unsign up!” Nick demanded.

“Can you even do that?”

“You are!”

“Man, calm down. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“You could die.”

“I think if I can survive Professor Aigner’s class than I can survive a war, Nick.”

It was that reason, that statement, and the deep down knowing that Red would not survive a war, that had Nick staring daggers into the bruised face of the guy he beat up and Peggy Carter. He found himself offering conditions, demanding that he be with Red every step of the way, found them agreeing.

Peggy Carter was smart and clever, and she knew damn sure how to manipulate the odds to her favor.

Loyalty was a blessing and a curse, she would say later in a voice hard and clipped and eyes distant and sad. Loyalty was hard to find, hard to hold onto. She knew he was loyal to Red the way he would be to S.H.I.E.L.D.

He was _good_. Hell, he was the best.

 _Director_ Carter – because she was no longer Peggy when she was his superior – told him never lose his cleverness and he never did. The curiosity and stubbornness that his grandfather had endlessly worried would get him into trouble managed to save him, his team, and countless civilians along the way as he rose through the ranks.

He was a skilled and experienced solider with a leather jacket and a glare that could bend metal. His work with the army, S.H.I.E.L.D., and the C.I.A. was legendary. He was the definition of ‘don’t-fuck-with-me.’

Things didn’t just happen to Nick Fury, they came with debriefings and signatures, and forms upon forms. If he said no – if he said that this wasn’t going to work then it didn’t happen because he was Nick Fury, and life happened when he gave his direct orders for it to.

That was how it worked.

Except when it didn’t.

Except when his months of cat and mouse with the leader of a terrorist organization overlapped with a case of the newly appointed Director, Alexander Pierce, and he disobeyed direct order from his superiors to ‘sit tight’ while they failed to win a no-win situation through negotiation. He didn’t so much as disobey orders as he elected to ignore them on the basis of it being a stupid ass order; and rescued the hostages in Bogota, including the Director’s own daughter.

Except when Red, being the clumsy klutz that he had always been, tripped and sprained his ankle, leaving Fury tasked with dragging his ass back through the sewers behind everybody else. Except when he let his guard down because they said – _his men said –_ that the guards were all dead. Not just injured, armed, and very, very pissed off.

Except when a grenade went off a bit too close to his face and he had ninety-five percent less vision in his left eye, a ruined career, over forty get well cards cluttering his hospital room, and a comatose best friend. Then a dead best friend, a missed funeral, and all those damn cards.  

After some time, some anger and grieving, and a bit of work, Nick found himself an eye patch and a new leather jacket to go with his new degree and teaching job as principal of Marvel High School.

Marvel High School was a state of the art building halfway between two U.S. Arm Bases and the New York S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters. It was a school that educated children of government officials and assets, future recruitees, proteges, and kids who’d grow up to be adults that the government would rather have on their side than against it. Built with the purpose of turning the potential of smart clever youth into sharp doubled edged swords that could be wielded by S.H.I.E.L.D. There were three levels of well-equipped labs, flexible curriculum, and a gymnasium that could withstand nuclear fallout.

A school ran by S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, essentially.

It was a downgrade to the S.H.I.E.L.D. version of a security guard (oppose to actual S.H.I.E.L.D. security guards who had guns and better pay), a frontline for children if somebody was smart enough to connect the pieces. It was a punishment, essentially, for fucking up, going against orders and saving the day.

Marvel High School was where you dumped the agents that knew too much but got people killed with incompetence, or misplaced nuclear missiles. Or, in Nick’s case, went against the direct orders of Director Pierce and saved his daughter.

The protection of children, of the legacy and future of S.H.I.E.L.D. was up to the rejects and fuck ups of government agencies. Nick seemed to be the only one to find something extremely screwed up about all of it.

Nick Fury was a skilled and experienced ex-solider with a leather jacket and a glare that could still bend metal. His work to improve test scores and graduation rates were legendary. He was the definition of ‘don’t-fuck-around-in-my-hallways.’ Things didn’t just happen to Nick Fury because he was Nick Fury and life happened when he gave his orders.

And that was how it worked.

Except when it didn’t.

Except when he opened the door to an old C.I.A. buddy who found a bruised and beaten blond circus performer that he was supposed to turn over to S.H.I.E.L.D. for questioning and then possibly to foster care. A small dumb kid too deep in too much shit and needed a hand, needed a home and much too slippery for any foster care, too damaged. Even when his ‘oh, hell no’ and ‘do I look like a fucking babysitter’ were met with ‘you’d do him good’ and ‘I know you have a damn degree in social work for some goddamn reason, Fury.’

So, after some time and a lot of work – it took the social worker all of three weeks to figure out that the reason Barton barely responded to her was because he was partially deaf. It took Nick two minutes. He found himself the foster parent to one Clinton Barton, the most sarcastic pre-teen to ever grace the planet.

“Are you winking or blinking at me?” He asked, tossing an overstuffed duffle bag full of neon colored spandex and oversized hoodies onto the floor and putting his dirty boots on Nick’s glass coffee table. “I can’t really tell, Agent Plankley.”

Nick didn’t like him – his stupid faded yellow bruised face or the Iowan twang in his voice.

“You know from Lilo & Stitch, Agent Plankley? I’ve watched that movie like twelve times in the past week, and let me tell you, I’m totally seeing it. You’re what, C.I.A? Something like that, maybe. Definitely government, got that C.I.A-y look to you, _Agent_. And the whole one eye thing…and not being very good at your job because, obviously the one eye thing. What happened to your eye?”

He was going to need to take the boy to the mall for new clothes and a haircut…which make Fury like him even less.

“Can we get a dog?”

He really, really did not like this kid.

Nick Fury was a skilled and experienced ex-soldier and a somewhat retired international spy with a leather trench coat and a glare that bent metal. His work as principal of Marvel High School was legendry. And as he found out, he was a half-way decent foster parent – strict and occasionally demanding but Barton had stopped shooting arrows into the neighbor’s windows and started using the targets set up in the backyard.

Fury got him into hearing aids and on the honor roll (and the archery team). Even if Clint would rather watch Cake Boss than talk about his last foster home, his escape to the circus and entrance into the criminal underworld, or why he shoved Tony Stark into a locker last week, things were good. Stable

And then there was a knock on the door.

He got Natalia Romanova – _Natasha Roman **off**_ , she told him in a way that reminded him of the day he met Peggy Carter – in a flurry of red tape, and agents, and paperwork. This skinny little curly haired red-headed Russian with a nearly undetectable accent came into his life. She had been allegedly raised by scientist Ivan Petrovich, allegedly affiliated with the KGB and the Red Room, and allegedly escaped and showed up outside of a safe house.

She had appeared at the door, managing not to trip a single intruder warning, told them that they’d been compromised and gave a sob story that could not be corroborated. She was suspected of having participated in a KGB smuggling ring, espionage, and a hell of a lot more.

She gave just enough to get protection, it was Nick’s job to figure out the rest of what she knew just like it was Nick’s job to figure out what went down with Barton and his former mentor “The Swordsman” that left him gasping in a puddle of his own blood.

The first words out of her mouth was to ask if he actually bought that rug or found it in the trash before stealing the remote from Barton.

Fury liked her.

He learned early that Natasha was a skilled fighter as well as the best damn gymnast he’d ever seen. He got her enrolled in ballet over a suspension – she broke Damon Dran’s arm and a confrontation with Tony Stark almost resulted in her being in a S.H.I.E.L.D. lock up facility – and put her on the MHS dance team as punishment.

It took him a little longer and a few temporary children to realize that he’d become a babysitter for S.H.I.E.L.D., the C.I.A., and any other government agency with wayward orphans. The only constant being Barton and Romanoff’s bitching.

He found that even if Barton and Romanoff could be difficult pains in the ass and his second-floor apartment had become increasingly littered with ballerina slippers and broken arrows, he didn’t mind all that much

When he had lost his sight, his friend, and his career, he had thought that life was done for. It had _felt_ like his life was over and meaningless. But much to Nick’s own surprise, his school and his kids were doing well, and he was doing okay.

And then there was a knock at the door.

Nick Fury was a retired solider and an ex-spy, paranoid was a state of being.

A knock at the door after midnight gave him every right to be paranoid so he grabbed his gun from the safe. Instead of facing down any number of less-than-desirable faces, he found himself shoving a gun into the bruised face of a familiar friend.

“Sam?” Nick asked, dropping his arm down to his side and clicking the safety back on. He didn’t miss the way Sam’s eyes lingered just a little too long on the eye patch. “Happy Sam Sawyer, you’re not looking so happy right about now.”

Nick couldn’t help but let a little bitterness coat his words because this asshole, this ‘friend’ of his, didn’t visit him once when he was in the hospital. He didn’t even answer his goddamn phone when Nick was struggling to adjust to blindness, to loss, to civilian life.

Sam’s eyes snapped to Fury’s good one, “It’s been a long day.”

“What the hell happened to your face?”

“As I said, long day,” Sam replied, running his hand over the bruised and swollen skin around his right eye, avoiding the stitches running up the side of his face.

“Ah,” Fury replied. _Classified._

Nick hadn’t been gone long enough to not see the red tape strangling his old captain’s words. If it was Nick Fury of eight years ago, he might had ripped all the red tape to pieces until he found the truth hidden beneath. Nick Fury of now, with two sleeping teens down the hall and an alarm set for six, could quite frankly not give a damn.

“It _has_ been a long day so I’ll be seeing you.”

Nick might have let the door swing shut harder than he usually would have at this time because Sam was predictable in the way he threw his punches and how he stopped closing doors, and Nick knew this. He knew it well.

The hiss Sam let out reeked of pain but Nick couldn’t be bothered to really care. Some people bruised their knuckles, others lost eyes; he saw no point in pretending like any of it mattered, “Most people use their foot.”

“Nick.”

“What?”

“I…” Sam began, pushing the door open only to trail off while he waited for Nick to invite him in like some damned vampire. When Nick did eventually, with an eye roll and a hand gesture, before he stalked off to the living room. “I need – I have – here.”

“What is this?” Nick asked, looking down at the file that was shoved into his arms. He sat the gun down by his side while opening it. There had once been a time when Nick could trust Same, now was not that time.

Most of the file was redacted, marked up with black markers so he couldn’t read anything of use. There was a picture of a little girl paperclipped to the side of the file who couldn’t have been more than eight years old. It looked like a school picture.

“What is this?”

Nick Fury was a foster parent and a principal, so it was safe to say he knew kids. Nick Fury was also a skilled and experienced ex-solider and retired spy, and he knew that if there was a child’s picture in a redacted S.H.I.E.L.D. file that everything had already gone to hell.

“Her name is Melinda May,” Sam said quietly, like he was testing the waters. “She’s sixteen now, that picture is old.”

“Why is she-?”

“It’s classified.”

“Then why the hell are you here?” Fury asked because there was a time and a place to deal with this level of bureaucratic bullshit and 12:54 A.M. on a Tuesday night with an alarm due to go off at six was not it.

“Her parents were agents, both of them. Level six.”

“ _Were_.”

“Yeah,” Sam commented. “They died, looks like they had been tortured, murdered. I don’t know. We don’t know how or why or when they were taken but she does.”

 _‘Compartmentalization,’_ Nick thought offhandedly. Nothing got out because no one knew the whole story. Nick would be annoyed by it if he hadn’t been the one that pushed the need for it first with Carter and then later with Pierce.

“She was there,” He deduced.

“Yeah, the only survivor and she’s not talking.”

“This says there were hostages,” Nick pointed out. “What happened to them?”

“We don’t know,” Sam admitted. “Theory was that she let them go. We didn’t know who they were, it had only been radioed in that there _were_ hostages a day before all of this went down. We can’t track people we don’t know, so. She’s not exactly being helpful, not talking and all.”

“I bet.” And Sam wasn’t talking either so Nick had to. “When did it happen?”

“She was placed into foster care.” Sam eyed Fury, not answering the question because it was _classified_ for some goddamn reason. “No family outside of her parents or at least, none that we know of and she’s obviously no help.”

“What are you getting at?”

“We need to know what she knows.”

“But she’s not talking.”

“Exactly,” Sam agreed. “We were… I don’t know – and you’ve done a lot with traumatized kids, I was just thinking.”

“What were you thinking, Sam?”

Nick had become acutely aware that Sam had been sent for a reason – a familiar face from the faceless agency that practically dumped him on his ass after doing what he swore to their oath to do. It was a tactic, an obvious one and one that Nick was offended that they thought would work.

“She was attacked in her first foster home,” Sam admitted, rubbing his neck. “Not by agents or anything like that, some girls that didn’t like Asian-Americans or something. She’s not talking about that either. She’s not talking about anything. I’m not even sure if she speaks English, honestly. Her parents were multi-linguals, Chinese, they homeschooled her after third grade.”

“Sam, I’ve got to be up in five hours so could you get to the point?”

“They sprained her wrist.”

“The point, Sam.”

“We know how good you are with kids,” Sam explained. The word ‘ _we_ ’ said like there was a big damn hanging sign in HQ that read ‘send all your traumatized youths to Fury’s.’ “And what you’ve done with the two you’ve got and well…”

“Well?”

“Would you like another one?” Sam asked meekly which was pretty goddamn funny because Captain Samuel Sawyer was 6’4 and built like Captain America shoved into a too tight Army Strong t-shirt.

“I’m not going to rat on a kid for you, Sam,” Fury replied because he doesn’t trust these people and he was not going to be a part of the added trauma of a sixteen year old _child_.

“You think that you have a choice, Nick?”

He set his jaw because, _no_. No, he didn’t.

In the same way that he knew it was an obvious tactic, he also knew who he worked for and knew that he didn’t have a choice in the matter. He was still an employee of S.H.I.E.L.D., a low ranking one.

“She needs a home,” Sam said, clasping his hands. “I’m not saying record her every word” – _that was exactly what S.H.I.E.L.D. would like –_ “But the kid just saw her parents killed and by the bruising… well, she needs somebody and no one who has talked to her has gotten through to her.”

“And you think I can?”

“I’ve seen your work and your school,” He shrugged. “The higher ups want knowledge, they want answers and they want them from her but I knew her parents.”

Sam looked down when he said that, something akin to guilt passing on his face.

“They were good agents, good people, and I’ve got a youngster of my own. If that was my kid, I’d want to know that she was getting what she needed. You’re qualified to do both, Nick. So, what do you say?”

“Does it really matter?”

Nick Fury was a foster parent and a principle so he knew kids and he knew as he flipped through the mostly blacked out two inch thick file – which included a medical report that made him want to shoot bullets into the wall – that she was not going to be an easy one.


	2. Pass It Along

Nick was awoken up abruptly by Barton throwing himself onto the first chair he came across in his half-wake state. That chair just so happened to be the one that Nick fell asleep in the night before, now Nick was up half an hour later than he like to be and Barton just dropped his cereal on the floor.

“Clean that up,” Nick said, grabbing the folder of useless classified garbage off the table as he stood up. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“You made me drop it!”

“Why’d you fall asleep on the couch, _Nicky_?” Natasha asked from the kitchen table. “Long night?”

“We’ll talk when I get out,” He replied, ignoring the stupid nickname with the intention of it going away as many of the other ones did before walking out of the room. He didn’t even bother with a glare, those didn’t work on her.

When he was dressed and his briefcase was filled with May’s folder – because it was long and irritating, and he fell asleep reading it – and the budge report that he’d failed to finish last night, he made his way to the kitchen where a cup of steaming coffee was left on the counter.

There was no mischievous smile hidden behind Barton’s hand or an upward tilt of Romanoff’s lips as he took the cup, neither of those two facts stopped him from dumping the mug out and refilling it himself. Natasha rolled her eyes at the action as she filed her nails next to where Clint was finishing up his French homework, “When are you going to believe that we don’t want to poison you?”

Nick ignored the jabbed, addressing Clint, “Didn’t I tell you to do that yesterday?”

“Sure did,” He replied as he scribbled out the answer to question five.

“And you didn’t.”

“Nope.”

“I’ve got news,” Fury stated instead of chiding Clint for procrastinating. If Clint wanted to be last minute than it was not Nick’s problem.

“About the man that was here last night?” Natasha asked.

“What man?” Clint paused in his homework. “I didn’t hear anybody.”

Nick took a sip of his coffee while Natasha rolled her eyes but neither commented on the fact that he wouldn’t have because he didn’t sleep with his hearing aids on. Especially not after the months of red itchy, infected ears when he’d refused to take them out.

“Yeah,” Nick answered Natasha’s question.

“Wait, we’re going to get another one, aren’t we?” Clint asked, putting two and two together and concluding into a pout. “Well, I’m not sharing my room this time.”

“Natasha is.”

“That’s not fair!”

“I think it totally is.”

“Shut up, Clint.”

“She’s a girl,” Fury explained. “We’ve only got three rooms.”

“So, we move.”

Nick gave Natasha an unimpressed look, “No.”

“Then give her your room,” Natasha replied sharply. “The last one stole my mascara and a knife.”

“She’s a girl?” Clint asked curiously.

“Yes,” Fury answered him and then turned to Natasha, “And no.”

She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms in response, muttering that he was stupid in Russian.

“What’s her name?” Clint asked over Nick’s unimpressed expression at Natasha’s choice of wording. She stuck out her tongue. “Is she from New York? Is she a _hot_ girl?”

“Ew gross, Clint! She’s practically your sister!”

“Is not!”

“Her name is Melinda,” Nick said before this turned into a full-fledged fight. He wasn’t in the mood for it, honestly.

“Can’t we just stick her in a guest room?” Natasha asked.

“You’re in the guest room,” Clint responded. “Ouch! Fury, she hit me!”

“Natasha, don’t do that,” Nick sighed, sipping his now lukewarm coffee. He was going to need more caffeine than this to deal with children today.

“Well, say it like you mean it.”

“We could draw straws,” Natasha suggested. “Shortest one gives up their room and has to sleep on the futon in the laundry room.”

“No,” Clint replied.

“No,” said Nick.

“Afraid you’ll lose, boys?”

 

“Do you think it would be a bad start to a healthy relationship if you make them sleep in the laundry room?” Nick asked over the rim of his ‘World’s Angriest Principal’ mug in the teacher’s lounge.

“You got a girlfriend staying over?” Victoria asked with a smirk. “Do you have a girlfriend, at all?”

Nick gave her a withering look that questioned just when the hell he would have found the time to meet anybody that wasn’t a high school student or bagging groceries at the store.

“You lost a bet,” Maria deduced, stating it as a statement of fact rather than a question before tucking back into her cold spaghetti.

“Something like that.”

“Was it the straws thing?” Victoria asked, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “You do know that they cheat at that, right?”

“I know.”

“And you let them?” Maria asked amused.

“Wait!” Victoria exclaimed, pushing her streaked red and black hair behind her ears before fixing Nick with a look of absolute disbelief. “Don’t tell me that the new files I got in administrations has something to do with you? The new student is one of yours, isn’t she? Melinda?”

“Melinda May.”

“Melinda May,” Victoria repeated softer.

“Is there an echo in here, Hand?”

“No, sir.”

“You’re getting a new kid?” Maria asked, having known Fury long enough to know him when he was angry and childless and for some reason, found the infestation of orphans at his home to be the most amusing thing about working at this school.

“Yes.”

“What’s her story?”

“Why’s she got to have a story, Hill?”

“They always do when they’re one of yours.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is,” Maria snorted. “And as a guidance counselor, it’d be beneficial if I know what it was.”

“Hill,” Fury said with a raised eyebrow as he sat his mug down a little too hard on a stack of report that he had planned to read over lunch. “You’re the assistant principal, not a guidance counselor.”

“I’m both until you get one that can stay in this place,” Maria countered with a raised eyebrow of her own. It had been four years and no one has lasted more than a few weeks, S.H.I.E.L.D. personal or civilian.

If it wasn’t for Maria then their actual guidance counselor Pepper Potts (well part-time guidance counselor, full time babysitter of one Tony Stark), bless her heart, would have been committed to a mental institute a long time ago.

“And don’t deflect the question. I swear, Natasha gets it from you.”

“Nick, _I_ swear,” Victoria sighed exasperatedly before removing his mug from the file to reveal a coffee ring. “This is the reason Pierce doesn’t like you.”

“And here I thought it was my sparkling personality.”

“Is it a spy thing?” Maria asked, causing Victoria to involuntarily freeze up before eying the room around them. “Like Romanoff? You can tell us, we’re all spies here.”

“Maria!” Victoria hissed, looking for any eavesdroppers in the mostly empty room.

“We _are_ , Nick.”

And it was true. Most of the staff were either ex-military, former C.I.A. or current S.H.I.E.L.D. but you didn’t exactly go around blabbing out the fact that you had previously been a spy or currently were a spy because you never really left the spy game behind you, just take a long-term job as a teacher.

Victoria was one of the highest ranking, hardest working agents in the organization. She had only stepped down after Project H.A.M.M.E.R went a little wary to care for her ailing mother. She came to work at Marvel High after her mother passed and boredom had set in. Nick had challenged her with the prehistoric disaster that was the administration office and she took him up on it.

Maria Hill was Fury’s right-hand man from the first day he met this straight from the academy eye-rolling know-it-all. She left field work at some point between the grenade going off and him leaving the hospital. She swore it wasn’t because of him ( _‘Come on, Nick, me? End my career for your sorry ass? If your ego got any better, it’d have an orbit!’_ ) and had only told him that she worked security briefly for Stark Industries while getting her teaching license _(‘It was unbearable and I’ve been tortured before’)_.

Nick thought that she might have higher clearance after she was reinstated as a part-time field agent with S.H.I.E.L.D. and it didn’t bother him at all. No, it didn’t. Not one bit.

He was only the principal of the damn school and only _just_ principal because Pierce had a petty little superiority complex where he needed to make Nick an example of disobedience.

“I’m not deflecting the question.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I’m electing to not answer it on the account that I don’t want to.”

“And why is that?”

“There is nothing wrong with the kids in my care.”

“Clinton Barton, circus performer turned nuisance, put an arrow through every basketball in the gym on his first day with a bow that he _stole_ ,” Victoria stated like she was reading his file. “Or Natasha Romanoff, the manipulative ballerina that snapped a kid’s arm in half using a technique of the KGB. They’ve got issues, Nick.”

He glared.

“Not saying that there is something wrong with them,” Victoria explained, putting her hands up. “ _Now_. You cannot honestly say that they came to this school in the best states of mind though.”

He couldn’t.

“And you’ve even stated before that the agency you foster from sends you problem kids.”

He did say that.

S.H.I.E.L.D. was that agency and they did have their problems.

“Property damage alone, Fury, I need to know,” Maria said, pushing her empty bowl away. “Barton shot so many pencils into my ceiling that it had to be replaced and Romanoff gave me a black eye. At least, give me some idea of what I’m dealing with.”

“It’s only fair,” Victoria added softly.

Nick considered their plea and thought back to the black lines of the S.H.I.E.L.D. folder sitting in his office. He thought of the smile of the little girl in the picture and the teenager he had not met, and on this rare occasion replied without any crypticness or deceit.

“I don’t know.”

 

“Where’s Coulson?” Clint asked as he dropped his tray of bruised fruit and cold pizza onto the small table cluttered with notebooks, tablets, and whatever Tony had dragged up from the labs.

He looked across the cafeteria trying to remember what the junior was wearing that day, scrutinizing with narrow eyes everyone who was not Phil Coulson.

“He’s not with the misfits,” He pointed in the general direction of Fitzsimmons’ debate about something physic-y and biological-y and… sleep? He did not think that he’d read their lips correctly but also, they talked so fast that it was hard to keep up. Daisy seemed to be haggling potato chips for pudding cups with Ward.

“Don’t call them that,” Someone mumbled – Bruce or Natasha, or whoever. Clint didn’t really care because Coulson was _not there_.

“And Lola’s in the parking lot,” Clint added. Lola, of course, being Phil Coulson’s beloved cherry red ’62 Corvette.

“Student Council had a meeting over lunch about the next fundraiser,” Natasha answered.

“Why can’t he just skip those, god,” Clint whined as he sat down in between Natasha and Tony. He bumped Tony’s elbow on purpose but he and Bruce were too wrapped up some equation that Clint didn’t care about to even notice that he caused Tony’s stylus to drag across his tablet.

“He’s the president,” Natasha pointed out.

“So?”

“So, he sets up the meeting, Big Bird,” Tony responded, not bothering to look up from Bruce’s notebook.

“Well, he’s going to miss the exciting news,” Clint beamed, smiling as all eyes at their table turned to him.

“Clint, no,” Natasha mumbled to him. “Does Fury even want us telling anybody?”

“Telling what?” Tony asked. “What is it? Fury finally tell you what he’s keeping under that eye patch?”

“He didn’t say _not_ too, Nat.”

“Whatever,” Natasha rolled her eyes, not really putting up a fight because Clint was right. Nick didn’t say not to tell people.

“We’re getting a new kid,” Clint told everyone.

“So?” Tony was the first to respond. “New people come here all the time. Who cares? It’s not like it’s… oh, wait. Fury is getting a new kid? That’s different! That’s interesting! Keep talking, is it a-“

“Stark, shut it.”

“We don’t know much, honestly,” Natasha said.

“Her name is Me _linda_ ,” Clint added with a big smile and excited eyes. “We don’t know when she’s going to be here though but she’s getting Fury’s room.”

“Why?” Bruce asked.

“He lost a bet.”

“Ahh.”

“There’s something weird about it though,” Natasha spoke over Clint’s dramatic retelling of how they conned Principal Fury out of his own bedroom. “There was a guy over last night.”

“It was probably just the social worker,” Clint responded.

“It was after midnight, what social worker comes after midnight?”

“It could have been a friend or something,” Bruce reasoned, sitting down his pen to focus on the conversation. “I’m sure Fury _has_ friends.”

“I’m not,” Tony countered. “Have you met the man? He’s about as friendly as a shark in an eyepatch.”

“Unbelievably, I’m with Tony on this,” Natasha cut in. “Nick didn’t look thrilled to see him, I couldn’t really hear their conversation but his body language was… stiff, like he was angry. And…and he had a folder.”

“Yeah,” Clint agreed. “Yeah, the one on the table! Looked like someone got trigger happy with a magic marker.”

“Yeah!”

“That’s really weird,” Tony said almost flippantly. “So, what are we talking? Like a spy or something?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“And Fury was really weird about it this morning,” Clint said to Natasha. “Like with you, he told me all he knew about when you’d be there and everything.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know,” she responded.

“It’s Fury,” Clint reasoned because Nick Fury knew everything except how to cook a proper meal, everything.

“Maybe,” Tony cut in loud enough to draw the attention of a few surrounding tables, “It’s something to do with his old spy days.”

“He’s not a spy,” Bruce said, pinching the bridge of his nose like an exasperated parent who had repeated those words on one too many occasions.

Natasha and Clint exchanged a look because it was not like Fury every said that he was a spy but it was not like he ever said that he _wasn’t_ a spy either. And they both knew their arrival at his doorstep was in less than usual circumstances, but the very thought that the man that watched Disney movies and baked cookies with them was some badass spy, it was laughable.

“Yeah, he is,” Tony argued with ‘ _DUH’_ ringing throughout his words. “My dad built some of the tech he used in the C.I.A.”

“You don’t even know if that’s true.”

“So?”

“Who’s your creditable source?” Bruce challenged. “Where’s your proof?”

“This isn’t an English paper, Brucey,” Tony snapped. “Come on, man, we are men of science! Don’t throw that English stuff at me.”

“We still have credible sources, Tony.”

“I heard my dad say it, credible enough?” Tony asked, ignoring Clint’s snort of _‘not really, no.’_ “That’s why I go here instead of some fancy-smancy private school upstate.”

“Oh, you mean, it’s not just to annoy us?” Natasha asked sarcastically. “And this is a private school upstate.”

“It’s not a fancy one though,” He shrugged. “And I know you love me, Natasha.”

“Whatever, Stark.”

“I wish Coulson was here,” Clint whined.   

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: A couple things: (1) Since I started writing this back in season two almost every character in the MCU at that time will likely show up in this but I only listed the main characters, (2) This loosely follows season one in terms of character relationships so pro or con depending on how you feel about Ward, (3) Daisy was Skye when I started this but I changed her name since she goes by Daisy and her parent issue is not really an story line in this.


	3. I Am Disappeared

“I don’t see the point,” Clint whined from his place on the couch, ignoring the glare from Natasha in favor of glaring at his reflection in the blank screen of the TV.

“It doesn’t matter if you see the point,” Fury muttered. “Just that you get it done.”

“The man _thinks_ _he is a bug_ , Nick,” Clint stressed out the worlds. “You realize that, right? There is no point in reading the stupid book. Obviously, this Kafka guy was high.”

“Look,” Natasha snapped. “You’ve got twenty more pages and I’m not allowed to turn on the TV until you finish them. I am missing a Law and Order marathon because of your stupid ‘I’m-not-reading-anything-that’s-not-a-comic-book’ philosophy so hurry up or I’m going to kick your ass.”

“Nick, Nat said _ass_ ,” Clint shouted despite Nick sitting on the opposite end of the couch as him.

“Read your book, Barton.”

“I’m starting to think you don’t like me,” Barton pouted after a few minutes of sulking and silent reading.

“I don’t,” Nick said, not looking up from Hand’s evaluation of needed school supplies (seriously, who was breaking _that_ many test tubes) that he was not reading. He couldn’t bring himself to read it because Romanoff and Barton were arguing again, or talking, or whatever it was that usually happened when they opened their mouths. _‘Oh, she’s explaining The Metamorphosis.’_

It was not that, it was… they shouldn’t be here.

Barton was usually in the backyard shooting targets at this time and Natasha should be practicing for her next ballet recital, or bugging Clint, or running up Nick’s phone bill talking to god-know-who is Russia.

“That wounds the soul, Nick,” Clint said after a while. “It’s because I got dirt on the table that one time, isn’t it?”

“It’s all the other times you got dirt on the table,” Nick said offhandedly.

“Or is it that time I accidentally dyed all your whites pink.”

“How’d you do that?”

“His awful collection of neon spandex in his closet,” Nick answered.

“You still have those?” Natasha asked Clint.

“Yes, he does.”

“I – they may come in handy,” Clint stated simply before returning to his book. “You don’t know.”

But that wasn’t it either, really, not the reason that he couldn’t focus on the papers in front of him. It was not the ramblings of the teens in his care. It was the rumors.

When he got down to it, it was the rumors that were circling around the school about… god know, really. He couldn’t really get pissed at Barton or Romanoff because he didn’t tell them _not_ to tell their friends. He didn’t think he had a reason to really but when you’re friends with Tony Start, everybody from here to Stark Tower was going to know within a matter of hours. He was pretty sure there was a mass text.

It wasn’t just that the student body knew that there was going to be a new student, but that they knew she was going to be one of Nick’s. That meant to the moron’s that roamed his high school that they had free range to whisper behind Barton and Romanoff’s back about how broken and damaged this new girl had to be. And that she was apparently a… what was it?

She was a spy or a genetic experiment gone wrong. She had green skin and personally knew James T. Kirk. She was an assassin, or a clown, or from Wisconsin according to the rumors.

God knows.

But she was the talk of Marvel High and it bugged him.

He didn’t know anything about this girl, except that she had dead parents and likely a train full of traumas.

Sam had said later, via the first phone call since Nick tried to call him six years ago, that he met her once when she was a kid – five or six, or something. He said that she had been quiet, shy, but smiled when smiled at and wore her hair in pigtails. Nick found that information to be completely useless.  

It bugged him because he knew more than the bored kids with nothing better to do than make up lies, and that still amounted to nothing.

There was a knock at the door when Clint had three more pages before he was done, but not before he was done bitching about the stupid book. Natasha emerged from the kitchen an oven mitt over her hand. They asked at the same time, “Is that her?”

“Just sit down,” Fury replied as he laid his papers down onto the table, thinking back to the black marked folder that told him nothing except for notes of treated injuries. He wondered if he was supposed to play this one like the others or if he was really and truly in over his head.

Nick opened the door to find Sam standing there again, bruising long gone and his too small t-shirt replaced with a suit that looked uncomfortable. Nick looked down at his own Marvel High t-shirt and felt underdressed.

“Fury,” Sam greeted stiffly and didn’t that just make Nick feel awkward.

“Sawyer.”

Sam stepped aside as much as a big man could on a tiny porch could, to reveal to Nick a girl leaning up against the flimsy railing.

She held herself close with her black hair lying limply around her face and dark exhausted eyes that bored into Nick but revealed nothing. She seemed both alert and uncaring all at once, at a calm that none of them could reach.

Everything about her was nondescript – from her hair to her oversized gray long-sleeve shirt that made her look more like that picture than Nick had been prepared for. The sleeves were too long but that didn’t stop Nick from noticing the bulk of the black splint on her left wrist.

“This is Melinda.”

“Hello, Melinda,” Fury said, sounding all too much like an _entire_ support group (Faceless Government Agency Traumatees Anonymous), not speaking softly. After months of being spoken to in soft voices, careful voices, by kind hearted nurses and treated like he was made of glass after he lost his eye, he had been made acutely aware of how really fucking annoying it was. “I’m Nick. If there is something else you go by, let me know.”

 _‘Does she like Mel, Linda, some other variation?’_ Nick was left to wonder. Nicknames, after all, did say a lot about a person.

She gave a sharp little nod of acknowledge but didn’t say a word.

It would have been easier if it was a support group.

_Hi, my name is Melinda and I have dead parents._

“You got stuff?” Nick asked. He couldn’t see any bags with her. In his mind already, he was calculating just how many trips to the dreaded mall it was going to take for him to make sure she was taken care of. Then again, Sam was the size of a house so he could very well have been blocking the bags.

“Why don’t you get your stuff out of the car?” Sam suggested, unlocking the door from where they were standing.

Why he didn’t assure that she wouldn’t take his car and get the hell out of dodge was beyond Nick. Surely, the daughter of spies could hotwire a car faster than it would take them to get down the stairs.

Nick notes that she was cautious the way someone who took a lot of precaution not too look cautious was. Her steps were careful and her eyes keen, she took in everything and assessed it for threats.

Nick had a feeling that he constituted as a threat.

“Nick…”

“I know the drill,” He muttered and he did because they told him the same thing for Natasha, as he was told for Barton.

It was always the same; keep tabs on them at all time. If anybody unusual was lurking nearby call for back up, do not engage. Pay attention to your surroundings and not anything out of the norm, write down everything no matter how insignificant, yada, yada, yada.

“Are you sure?”

“Has she said anything?” Nick asked, deciding to ignore Sam’s question about his competence. He lost his sight, not his ability to do his goddamn job.

“A few things, here and there,” Sam admitted. “Some of it was conflicting, some of it wasn’t. She said she was lactose intolerant, don’t know if it’s true. Good English, so I think we can assume she, at least, knows the language. She’s polite, got manners, more than most I do business with.”

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“No?”

“She hadn’t said a single word other than that.”

“What’s she got with her?”

“Some clothes, some family trinkets that she managed to hold onto,” Sam stumble dover his words like he wasn’t sure. He probably wasn’t. “We, uh, got her some hygiene stuff, a toothbrush and the likes. And we are willing to help pay for anything else she needs, within reason, of course.”

Nick watched her as Sam spoke about information, help if needed, and who the hell really cared. Melinda pulled out a black backpack and a duffle bag, neither of which looked heavy or full. She slammed the door shut with more force than necessary almost like a normal moody teenager before making her way back onto the porch.

Nick reverted his eyes back to Sam.

“Come in,” He said, stepping aside for her to enter before him. “I’ll show you your room. I can take your bags if you’d like.”

She didn’t hand them to him, as expected, and  she walked over the threshold. He guided her through the living room, leaving Sam to awkwardly stand on his front porch. He wouldn’t enter unless told he could, especially not when Clint and Natasha were awake.

Nick noticed Clint’s abandoned book.

“Barton, finish the damn book,” He called into the kitchen where he knew the two of them were listening in. “And Natasha, do not burn the house down.”

He cringed inwardly as he said the words, realizing belatedly that he had no idea what her triggers were going to be. Had her parents died in a fire? Would it make her retreat into herself?

It was classified, all he knew were words with no meaning behind them. _Torture_ , without reason. _Significant trauma,_ with no cause. It was all classified for a reason that was beyond him and he was not given the privilege to figure it out why.

She didn’t look triggered or at least, she didn’t show it.

“I’m cooking, Nick,” came Clint’s reply from the kitchen.

It had been followed quickly by Natasha’s, “No, he’s not!”

Melinda raised an eyebrow at the voices from the kitchen but said nothing so Nick explained, “That is Clint and Natasha, my foster children. They’re about your age, you’ll go to their school.”

She didn’t say anything.

“This is your room,” Nick continued, opening the door to his former room, the last room before the laundry room. It was bare of all of his clothes and his gun, with freshly washed navy blue sheets and a gray comforter. It was as bare and as plain as it was when Nick occupied it but he was hoping that she’d make it her own. It was always more telling when they did.

He didn’t mind the futon, he guessed. It was better than the couch and the laundry room was where his hidden safe was located so there was that.

She sat the bags down on the bed and slowly unzipped the duffle bag.

“You need help?”

“No, but thank you,” She said, quiet enough that Nick almost didn’t hear it. He was surprised, honestly, having not expected her to talk at all, least of all to him.

“I’ll be down the hall,” He told her. “Bathroom’s opposite side, two doors up. The kitchen is off the living room. If you need anything, I’ll be in the kitchen after I kick Sam out.”

She smiled a little at that, just a slight up-curl of her lips. It was so quick and so small that he barely noticed it at all. He’d take it to the cold indifferent mask.

“Well… we will discuss what you need, school, and everything else after dinner because I’m starving and I know the food in whatever safe house you’ve been shacked up in was probably shitty Thai take-out. You can join the rest of us whenever you’re done or I can get you when dinner is ready.”

Nick took his leave after that, leaving the door cracked. He was halfway down the hall before he heard the tell-tale click of it locking shut. He just continued walking until he was at the front door where Sam was still standing.

“Nick, seriously, if you need anything, don’ hesitate,” Sam said as he forced a shiny black credit card into his hand. “Use that, please, and if you get any information at all about, you know, call me immediately.”

“Bye, Captain,” Nick responded as he shut the door in the other man’s face before making his way to the kitchen where he was met with a wall of garlic. “Spaghetti?”

“My specialty, Nicky,” Natasha stated, not looking up from the pan of boiling noodles. It really wasn’t her specialty, in fact her spaghetti was only slightly better than eating week old take-out but neither he nor Barton were going to tell her that.

He turned to Clint, perched on top of the refrigerator with his book between his legs, “Done?”

“Yep,” they both answered.

“How’s whatshername?” Clint asked. “Melinda, her.”

“She was quiet,” Natasha commented. “I didn’t hear her say anything, and I definitely don’t like that guy, BTW.”

“Me neither.”

“I don’t either,” Clint chirped up. “In case you were wondering, seems like a huge douche.”

“She doesn’t… she’s shy, it appears,” Nick faltered, there were too many gaps in who Melinda May was for him to make an accurate assumption of her character. “So, don’t bombard her with questions, Clint. She’s been-“

“Thought a lot, I know,” Clint finished, rolling his eyes. “Don’t ask question I wouldn’t want people to ask me. Got it. I’m not an insensitive jerk.”

“You sure?” Natasha smirked.

“Shut up.”

“That sounds like something an insensitive jerk would say.”

“Go to hell, Romanoff.”

“You’re proving my case, Arrow-boy,” She laughed, and then asked Nick, “Is she a vegetarian? I need to know if I need to make two kinds of sauces or if a meat sauce is fine.”

“Clint, go ask.”

“Gahhg,” Clint groaned before jumping off the fridge. Fury realized as soon as he left the room that he just made a shortsighted and dumb mistake. Clint was a good kid but he lacked tact.

Nick ignored Romanoff’s snort as he got up from the table.

“Hey,” Clint called through the door while shaking the locked doorknob. “It’s actually a pretty solid rule around here that your bedroom door isn’t allowed to be locked. Nat wants to know if you’re a vegetarian or something? I’m Clint, by the way. What are you even doing in there? Did you-“

“Clint,” Nick warned as he approached the door. “What did I say not two seconds ago?”

“It’s a rule,” Clint stated, stressing the words. “You cannot lock the door to your room.”

“Go help Natasha.”

“But-“

“Clint.”

“ _Fine_ ,” and with that, he left.

“Melinda,” Nick called, knocking his knuckles softly against the wood. “Could you open up?”

No response.

“We’re about to eat,” He stated. “And Clint was right about the locks but we’ll talk about that at a later time.”

Against, nothing.”

“Open the door.”

Nope. Not a single word.

“Look,” He stated. “I’ve got a key to the door so open it or I will.”

Zilch.

Not a response.

Nick sighed, pulling his keys from his pocket before stating, “I’m opening the door, Melinda.”

He waited a second for any movement on the other side of the door before sliding the key into the lock and turning it, “I’m opening the door.”

And he did, only to find an unopened tooth brush sitting on the bedside table, an empty duffle bag, and an oversized nondescript gray long-sleeve t-shirt folded neatly on top of the bed.

And no Melinda May.

And thought Fury would never admit to anybody, he almost had a heart attack right there and then, because she was not there. He could not see her.

“May?” He asked the empty room. “Melinda.”

The bare walls only greeted him with silence.

Nick checked the closet; it was empty except for a white sweater made from itchy looking yarn and two black button ups. One of the dresser’s drawers wasn’t closed correctly, Nick pulled it open in some desperate ‘maybe-she’s-in-here’ illogical thinking that the military should have drilled out of him a long time ago.

The drawer held nothing but a lumpy wallet and a few more shirts. If he was willing to bet, or think clearly enough to look, it probably held more keys to unlocking who this girl really was but clearly, he was not thinking clearly.

In fact, Nick was two full seconds away from a full blown ‘ _what-do-you-mean-I-lost-this-child’_ panic when he noticed a black splint sticking out from under the bed. A splint that just so happened to be connected to the thin arm of Melinda May.

With a deep breath, he noted that she looked rather peaceful when she slept. Now that he had the time to actually _look_ at her, there was faint bruising on her cheek and jaw, and the dark smudges under her eyes made her look like she hadn’t slept in days. It saddened a part of him, the sleeping under the bed. He was reminded of agents who had done this very thing after tough missions.

He decided not to wake her. She needed the sleep.

He did not lock the door because rules were rules, were rules.

“So, meat or no?” greeted him as he entered the kitchen.

“Doesn’t matter,” Fury decided. “She won’t be at dinner.”

“Why?” Clint asked from where he was sulking at the kitchen table. “Because she broke a rule?”

“You don’t not get to eat for breaking rules, Clint,” Nick said, not for the first time to the boy. And not for the first time did he really hate that circus he was a part of. “She is asleep, I decided to let her sleep.”

“She broke a rule,” Clint pointed out.

“One that she didn’t know,” Nick replied before adding because it seemed like it was stressing Clint out. “Her door is unlocked now, but neither of you are to go into it without her permission, okay?”

“Duh,” Clint sounded. “That’s a rule, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is mostly filler but hey, we finally meet Melinda. She interacts a lot more with Nick, Clint, and Natasha in the next chapter and we will eventually meet Coulson.


	4. The Next Round

Nick was up late.

Again.

Though the reason was not because of a mysterious file rather a not so mysterious file that he had to finish tonight because there was a faculty meeting tomorrow.

He was a legendary spy for a multitude of government agencies and now he was reading dumb reports and going to dumb faculty meeting where they were going to discuss fundraisers and standardized test. He could hardly believe that this was his life.

He had forgone the droopy La-Z-Boy, that had seen better children-free days, for a hard chair at the kitchen table because he couldn’t – _well he could_ – fall asleep.

Nick had found that messing up, though it did come with its own consequences, rarely resulted in the death of himself or the people under his command. If he didn’t finish reading a report on if they had enough wooden pencils for state testing wasn’t actually a life-threatening event but nonetheless. He couldn’t bitch at Barton for not doing his homework if he neglected to do his own.

Nick wouldn’t have even known he wasn’t alone if it wasn’t for the light.

Nick Fury, ex-soldier, who was always aware of his surroundings didn’t notice the soft socked-covered footsteps of his newest charge until the little light inside the refrigerator casted its glow in the poorly lit room.

The table sat farther back in a nook in the kitchen and it appeared that she had not noticed him either because when he spoke, her spine stiffened and she swung around to face him after he drawled out the word, “Hungry?”

She was dressed only in a tank top and pajama shorts, bruises looking nearly translucent in the fridge lighting on her legs and her shoulders. There was nasty scar tissue on her shoulder that glimmered almost white in the light. She didn’t look like much of a threat.

“Sorry,” He found himself saying. “It was not my intention to scare you. There is some leftover spaghetti in there.”

She gave him a sharp nod before angling herself so she could see the contents of the fridge and him at the table. She ended up, after giving the fridge a once over, grabbing a bottle of water and an orange out of the bowl on the counter.

“Care to join me?” Nick spoke when she started to head out of the room.

A few seconds of silence dragged between them before she responded, “A demand masquerading as a question.”

“Glad to see that you can read between the lines,” Nick responded, sitting his report on the table to give her his full attention as she sat down. “We haven’t got to talk. If there was anything you wanted to tell me you can.”

She twisted the cap off the bottle and narrowed her eyes in response.

“Okay,” He sighed because he knew that it was not going to be as easy as that. “Let’s play twenty questions.”

She responded with a raised eyebrow.

“Sam told me that you don’t talk much,” Nick explained. “And I get that, a bunch of agents that you don’t know demanding answers to things that are understandably traumatic, but I’m not them.”

“You’ve probably heard that from half a dozen agents,” He continued, “I know because S.H.I.E.L.D. is full of bastards but you’re living in my house. I want you to know that you’re okay so, twenty questions. I can get some answers and you can get some answers. This whole situation is unfair but the game is not.”

She didn’t respond to him or acknowledge him in anyway other than to eat a slice of her orange. Nick found himself almost missing Barton’s snappy comments about his eyepatch.

“You want to go first?” He asked.

No response. He would say that she was ignoring him if she didn’t look like she was ready to bolt if he made any sudden movements.

The silence dragged on between them and he sighed internally. He was about to ask something when she piped up.

“Are you a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?”

“No.”

“ _Were_ you a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent?”

“Yes,” He answered honestly. “I am not an agent anymore and I do not share their agenda.”

“Then what _are_ you.”

It was a demand, with suspicious eyes that dared him to answer falsely.

“A babysitter, apparently.”

“Are you reporting on me to S.H.I.E.L.D.?” She asked because damn it all if she didn’t know how the game worked.

“I don’t share their agenda,” He repeated.

“That is not a no,” She pointed out.

“No, it is not,” He agreed. “If you say something that could potentially save someone’s life then I would relay the information, just like I would do with anybody else.”

She seemed to accept that and gave a sharp nod.

“That’s three. Do you have any allergies?”

“Lactose Intolerance.”

“I got that,” Fury said though he honestly doubted it. She was raised by spies, raised to be misleading and hold things close. Medical information such as allergies were a liability in the field if they were told but they were also telling if you ended up with milk in your coffee. He played along anyways, “Anything else?”

She shook her head no. “That’s two.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Why aren’t you an agent anymore?”

“Still holding onto that?”

“Yes, that’s three. Answer the question.”

Her voice was clipped, hard, and gave away no emotion like she was interrogating him. He couldn’t help the smirk that came across his face because she was clever. He always liked clever.

“A grenade went off and I lost most of my sight in one eye,” He answered, gesturing to the eyepatch. “It’s not a fashion statement.”

“How much of your vision is gone?” She asked after a moment, like she was debating to ask for more details before deciding against it.

“Ninety-five percent,” he stated. “Do you go by Melinda or something else?”

“May is fine,” She answered coldly. As far as nicknames go, that one said that she was keeping him at arm’s length. “What do you go by?”

“Nick is fine around here but at the school, it is either Mr. Fury or just Fury. Not Nick.”

“School?”

“Yeah, school,” Nick answered, watching her face for any reaction.

There wasn’t one.

“You’ll be attending, not tomorrow but the next day. Marvel High School. I’m the principal.”

She raised an eyebrow at that.

“Yeah, _really_ ,” He scoffed. “So, I’ll get you situated. I know you were homeschooled so we’ll have to do a placement test, which can be done tomorrow during my meeting.”

“Do you have enough clothes to last you a week?” Fury asked. “Because your bags looked light.”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Fine, we’ll go to the mall after your placement test,” Fury stated, catching her eye. “S.H.I.E.L.D. said they’d help with getting you settled in so let’s make them regret that.”

“Why are you sleeping on a futon?”

“How’d you know about that?”

“Process of elimination,” She stated. “Answer the question.”

“I lost a bet.”

She opened her mouth like she was going to ask another question but closed it. Stating instead, “Explain.”

“We made a bet on whose room you’d get and I lost.” Her eyes narrowed in question but she didn’t ask any. “You play a sport?”

“No.”

“Have any hobbies?”

“No.”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Blue. How long will I be here?”

She looked away.

Her eyes deviated from his to look just over his shoulder. It occurred to him for the first time that this outer shell still housed that smiling eight year old girl from the picture. She was sad, and scared, and alone for what could be the first time.

He didn’t really know what to tell her – she would be here forever, or until S.H.I.E.L.D. decided something else for her, or some strange third uncle twice removed took her in. She’d be here until someone figured out how to bring the dead back to life because her parents were dead and with them, all sense of safety that she ever had.

“As long as you like,” He told her. “What are your parents’ names?”

“You don’t know?”

“It was classified.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you have green tea?” She asked bringing the water bottle up to her lips.

“No, but you can add it to the shopping list on the fridge,” Nick responded, not missing that she ignored his question. “What happened in Bahrain?”

“What?”

“What happened in Bahrain?”

The bottle slipped from her hand when the shaking got to be too much, and it fell to the table with a splatter of water. It soaked through Nick’s report.

 _‘Ah, a trigger,’_ he thought dully.

“I’m… I’m sorry?” She stuttered, looking around for paper towels like she was lost. “…It…”

“It’s okay,” Nick said, standing up. “Just… Calm down.”

He walked to the other side of the room and grabbed a roll of paper towels. When he turned back around she was gone.

 

Five minutes.

Nick was up.

Less than four hours ago he was blow-drying a report dry and now he was awake. Five minutes before his alarm was supposed to go off because some asshole was trying to shove their fist through his front door. And he had to get up because they were going to wake the kids.

And that was fine.

It really was _fine_ because Nick was going to kick their ass or shoot them in the foot with a nail gun. He hadn’t decided.

Nick didn’t even care if it was someone dangerous; if it was someone to blind his other eye because it was five fifty-fucking-five in the morning and he was not supposed to be up for another five goddamn minutes.

He felt like shit because less than _three_ hours ago, he was trying to jimmy May’s door open but she was clever. Oh, how he thought that he had liked that.

She used the chair from the desk to jam up under the doorknob so even if Nick could unlock the door, which he could, he couldn’t get it open without risking waking someone up or property damage. Neither of which he was all that keen to do.

“Leave,” She said with a great deal of voice control after a few minutes. Her voice was calm and sharp, and left no room for argument from somewhere ridiculously close to the door.

And damn it all if Fury didn’t just _listen_ because the direct route of question didn’t work.

Barton had caved and babbled on for hours about nothing in particular, and Romanoff had reacted with violence and insults that told Nick enough but May. She… there was a panic and a grief that was not being expressed properly. Nick wasn’t sure if he didn’t just screw himself over with getting through to her.

“Get back in your room,” Nick told Natasha as he passed by. He was not convinced that she ever actually slept.

“Who is it?”

“Tell them to die,” Clint called from his room.

“Go back to bed.”

And with that, she disappeared into Clint’s room. It was _good enough._

Nick continued to the door as the knocking grew louder. He flipped the lock and slammed the door open.

 _What the fuck_ , was what Nick wanted to say to the sharply dressed Men in Black wannabes, but he settled on, “Barton said to die.”

“What?” The woman asked, her brow crinkled in confusion.

“Agent MacDonald,” The man said, and judging from his red knuckles he was the one that thought it was okay to break down someone’s front door five minutes before their goddamn alarm went off. Nick hated him in particular.

MacDonald pointed to the woman, “Agent Tucker.”

“What do you want.”  It was a demand, it was far too early for questions.

“May we come in?” asked the woman, who did not seem to get the hostility coming off Nick in tidal waves.

Maybe it was his Christmas pajama pants (they were a gift from Romanoff for this very reason) or the skewed eyepatch that he had thrown on hazardously. He should start sleeping in leather of something, he though offhandedly.

“No.”

“It’s cold.”

“It’s six in the morning.”

“We apologize for the inconvenience,” the man, Agent MacDonald, said apologetically. “It is sensitive information and we’d prefer not to discuss it in front of your _neighbors_.”

He eyed blonde hair, blue eyed Mrs. Coulson across the street in her “We Support the Troops’ t-shirt and her beagle on a leash like she was a terrorist.

Nick turned to leave, leaving the door open and walking to the kitchen. If they were going to do this now he was going to need coffee. He heard the click of their shoes on the kitchen tiles as he turned on the coffee machine.

Nick turned to them stiffly. He did not want to deal with this, with them.

“What do you want?”

“We’re here by orders of the _director_ to _stress_ how important it is to get information from this girl,” MacDonald stated.

“Melinda,” Agent Tucker added with a smile like she would get a gold star for remembering her name. Nick decided that he liked her the least.

“I got that all from Sam,” Nick sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. He needed to shave and a few more hours of sleep, not these two.

“Yes, and Captain Sawyer said that you were not taking this seriously.”

“She knows time sensitive information,” added Tucker persuasively, trying and failing to appeal to Nick’s sworn oath to protect, to be that shield between chaos and humanity.

It might have worked if he gave a shit about anything right now.

“You don’t know that.”

“Huh?”

“You don’t know what she knows,” Nick stated. “I’ve read the file; there is no time sensitivity if you’re still trying to piece it all together. That’s why she’s here, is it not?”

“Well-“

“It _is_ ,” Nick voiced. “And I’m working with her. If she says anything useful, I’ll personally call Pierce and let him know but I’m not going to push her. She just saw her parents die.”

“It’s very important-“

“I’d care more about that if you would tell me why the hell it is so damn important.”

“That’s classified.”

“Of course, it is.”

“Has she said anything yet?” Tucked asked.

“Yeah, she’s a big fan of the color blue.”

“Stop wasting the time of S.H.I.E.L.D,” MacDonald growled.

“Stop wasting the time of a high school principal,” Fury growled back. “She has been here a day. _A day._ I don’t know what you were expecting but most people don’t discuss how their parents were brutally mur-“

And there she was.

With her goddam cat-like footsteps and daughter-of-spies ability to sneak around undetected, standing in the doorway with bed hair and a look of unsurprised betrayal across her face.

Nick didn’t know how long she had been there.

“May,” He began but the harden glare that she turned on his stopped him from continuing.

What was he going to say anyways?

“Agent Tucker, MacDonald,” May said with a nod. Her jaw was tight and her movements stiff as she turned on her feet and marched out of the room. Nick seriously felt like stabbing them.

“And now,” He stated in a deadly whisper, playing on every ounce of his former reputation to cause both agents to stiffen their spines. “It is going to take longer for her to trust me.”

He took a deep breath before continuing louder, “Get out.”

They did so, leaving him with card to contact someone Nick didn’t even bother remembering the name of.

As he slid the card into his wallet, he noticed that green tea was added to the grocery list under Clint’s chicken scratch request for pizza rolls and Natasha’s looping cursive for Oreos. Her handwriting was sharp and to the point, much like the girl herself.

“Nick.”

“Natasha.”

“Who was that?”

“Social workers.”

 

“Melin – May,” Fury corrected himself as he knocked on her door. “Breakfast is in ten. Get ready, your placement test is today.”

He didn’t get an ‘okay’ or an ‘I hate your guts’ in response so he left her to join Clint in the kitchen.

“Is she coming?” He asked as he cracked an egg on the edge of the frying pan. “You know, I haven’t even seen her face yet. You know that, right?”

“I know, Barton,” Fury replied tiredly.

“And you’re being weird.”

“How so?”

“It’s – I don’t know,” Clint began, his eyes focused on not breaking the yokes of his frying eggs. “It’s, like, you’re being too nice to her.”

Nick’s lip curled into a smirk, “I’m a nice guy.”

“Oh _really_ , I completely missed that,” Clint said with a sarcastic laugh. “No, you’re a good guy. Nice is reserved for Coulson’s mom.”

“If this is an elaborate way of saying that you want me to make you a cake there are simpler ways.”  

“Uh no thanks, you’d burn the house down.” Clint flipped an egg. “And I said, _too_ nice, keep up.”

Everything was quite for a moment and Nick knew that Clint wanted to continue. If he needed time to organize his thoughts and figure out how he wanted to say whatever it was he wanted to say than Nick would give him that time.

“It’s, uh, did something happen to her?” He asked, voice pitched into almost a whisper as if he didn’t want to be overheard, even by Nick. “Like worse than me and Tasha.”

“She’s not from a circus, no,” Nick replied, matching his quiet tone but was dismissive. He did not want to have this conversation, no right now and not with Barton. “Or Russia.”

“You know what I meant and that’s not it,” Clint said undeterred, though he did crack a smile. “I mean, it’s not a shitty parents thing, is it? Tasha doesn’t talk about it but her parents sucked, or whoever raised her or something. And mine died, not like they were all that great before, and Barney just… well, the orphanages I was in were – not great. It’s more than people just leaving her, right?”

“Clint,” Nick said, dropping his dismissive tone and got serious. “Like with you and with Natasha, if you want to know than you’re just going to have to wait until she tells you.”

“I know,” Clint sighed, making enough eggs to feed everyone on the block. “Are you going to ask-“

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s fine. She’s fine.”

“But couldn’t-“

“Clint.”

“I just want to help!”

“Help with what?” Natasha asked as she walked into the room.

“Help with getting you a bell,” Clint supplied. “You’re too damn sneaky.”

“Clint,” Fury warned half-heartedly.

He sighed and rolled his eyes, dropping into his seat with four eggs, “I know, I know, don’t say the ‘damn’ word.”

“Is she coming?”

“Eventually,” Nick replied. Before he could comment that May’s delay might have been caused by the outrageous amount of time Natasha spent in the bathroom, she walked into the room.

Her hair was damp, leaving wet patches on her black button up and her footsteps audible on the tile because of her black boots. Her shoulders were tense as she sat down in the seat between Natasha and Nick, never relaxing.

Nick couldn’t blame her.

“Hi, I’m Clint,” Clint greeted her. His eyes were wide and excited as he observed her, looking for anything to tell his friends.

“And I’m Natasha,” Romanoff added. “Thanks for the introduction, Clint.”

She nodded softly as she stared at the eggs in front of her, “May.”

“So, uh, I made the eggs. Nick can’t cook, like at all, so we take turns.”

“Thanks.” May picked up her fork before cutting the eggs into smaller pieces

“When you start school, we can show you around,” Natasha said after an awkward lull in the conversation. “Marvel High is pretty big but it’s easy to navigate once you get used to it.”

“And you can eat lunch with us,” Clint added.

May didn’t respond; Nick didn’t expect her to.

Natasha and Clint exchanged a look before Clint shrugged, “Or not, if you don’t want to. There are plenty of people to eat with.”

“May,” Nick said, watching as she moved pieces of egg around her plate without ever taking a bite. “I have a facility meeting today, during which you can take your placement test.”

“Oh, that _sucked_ ,” Clint winced in remembrance. “It was _so_ boring.”

“And then I’m taking the rest of the day off so I can-“

“Spy on me,” She cut in, looking at him with a glare that dared him to lie.

“Take you to the mall to get clothes,” Nick finished dully.

“Spy?”

“Just a misunderstanding, Romanoff.”

“Oh, I see,” She as if she did actually _see_ it.

“What, is it because of the locks?” Clint asked, turning to May. “You know, we’re not allowed to lock the doors to our room. In case of emergencies or fire. Also, it’s just kind of rude, I guess. You also can’t go into someone’s room without asking even if it’s to hide their bow because that was apparently _so funny_.

“It was _hilarious,”_ Natasha grinned.

“No, it wasn’t.”

And that was how breakfast continued, awkward as Clint and Natasha bantered about old pranks and too many failed attempts to loop May into the conversation. Nick wondered what Maria was going to say when he brought in a wrinkled report into a meeting, and wondered just how well a dreaded mall trip was going to go with a girl that refused to talk to him.

And then Natasha’s phone rung and everyone pretended not to notice how May dropped her fork at the sound. Natasha got up from the table to take the call, already talking to Elektra Natchios about their science project before getting out of earshot. Nick was reminded of something else he had to do.

“We’ll get you a phone as well,” Nick said, mentally adding it to his growing list of shit that had to get done today.

“I don’t have anybody to call,” May stated like that was just an acceptable thing for a sixteen year old to have no one.

“So, you call me,” Nick replied. “Or I call you.”

“Don’t text him during class though,” Clint piped up, talking around a piece of toast. “He’ll call the teacher to take your phone. Uncool, Fury, uncool.”

“Eat your eggs, Barton.”


	5. The Outdoor Type

“You seem distracted, Fury.”

Nick did not spare a glance up to Maria from where he was shoving papers into his briefcase, “I’m busy.”

“Could it have anything to do with…?” She trailed off, forcing Nick to have to look at her just to follow the tilt of her head in the direction of May on the other side of the glass door.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, Hill.”

“Oh, really?” She laughed incredulously. “You didn’t take your _eye_ off her during the whole meeting. You know that you approved for Sitwell to let his class spend an entire week outside so they could study photosynthesis, right?”

“Yes,” He glared at her. “For you. You’re welcome.”

“For me?”

“I am going to be out of the office all day today,” Nick explained. “And Jasper has a habit of whining at me when I don’t approve his ‘teaching methods” – more like methods to case every asthmatic and hay-fever sufferer to be sent to the nurse, but whatever – “and you’re acting principal today. Do you want to listen to Sitwell bitch?”

“No.”

“So, there you go.”

“How’s it going, by the way?” Maria asked, jabbing her head back in the direction of May again. “You look tired.”

“It was a long night,” Nick stated but unlike Sam, who would back off or leave it be, Maria didn’t so much take the hint as she completely disregarded it.

“Why?”

“Because I had to read Hand’s report.”

“And that’s it?”

“It was a long report.”

“So, what was it again, Melinda?” She began. “Is she adjusting well to casa de Fury?”

“She hasn’t broken anything.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“That’s always a good thing.”

“She has a black eye,” Maria stated, asking how she got it without actually asking him anything. “She covers it with make-up but you can tell, if you’re looking for it, which I was. And what about her wrist? What happened there?”

“She came like that,” Nick replied, vague and unhelpful like he did when he didn’t really want to discuss it or if he just didn’t know.

“Is she… okay?”

“No.”

“Do you want me-“

“I don’t want you to do anything, Hill,” He said in a voice that barred no argument. “Just don’t destroy my school.”

“What are you going to do then?”

“Take her shopping.”

“And that’s going to fix what’s wrong with her?”

“No, but it’s going to fill her closet and that’s a start,” Nick replied as May finished up the last questions on her placement test. “She took that test in less than twenty minutes.”

“She did,” Maria nodded before picking up her own folders. “Maybe she’s a genius.”

“God, I hope not,” Fury groaned. Cleave and smart was one thing, the way that Barton and Romanoff were clever and smart but genius? He could probably handle a Banner-brand quiet genius that was happy to be shoved off into a soundproof lab and left alone but someone like Stark, or Fitz, or Richards, _god no_.

“I’ll have it graded and e-mail you her class schedule later. Have fun at the _mall_ today. Maybe buy a new eyepatch, you deserve it.”

“Funny, Hill.”

“I’m thinking pick with unicorns and glitter.”

“ _Very_ funny.”

Nick watched as Maria walked out the door and picked up May’s test. She told her something, probably the same thing that she had just told him before leaving with an uneasy smile.

Nick took a deep breath.

_Off to the mall._

 

Nick Fury like to think he’s a patient man.

He had to be to succeed in a career in the military, or the C.I.A., or S.H.I.E.L.D., or education. Patience was the key.

It was all a lot of waiting, a lot of hostility with people you preferred to not know.  

Nick Fury could keep his cool even when dealing with Tony Stark on most days. A gun held to his temple wouldn’t even cause the slightest of fluctuation in his blood pressure.

He should be able to handle the mall without his blood pressure sky-rocketing to kingdom come.

He couldn’t.

No one hated the mall quite like Nick Fury.

It was too loud and colorful. The music was too loud and the smells too strong, groups of teenage boys that should have been in school populated the place, and people moseyed around the premises with no real reason to actually _need_ to be there. No one except Melinda May, who looked seconds away from skinning herself alive just so they didn’t have to step foot inside the place. 

“Where would you like to go?” Nick asked, eying the colorful displays in the colorful shops, advertising sales and deals and skinny jeans with distaste. He turned his gaze to Melinda and noted her dark clothes before he mentally marked out stores like Claire’s.

She shrugged her shoulders, eyes moving around the building as if she was calculating escape routes and finding exits. That was something Nick knew he shouldn’t take comfort in but found that he did.

Malls were tactical hell.

He let out a long breath and let his shoulders slump forward before standing a little taller. With a sigh and a ‘ _let’s go,’_ they moved into the building. Melinda, thankfully, followed despite everything in her tense muscles suggesting that she was willing to stand just outside the mall’s entrance until the end of time.

Nick led her to a shop called Hollister; he figures that since he’d seen the kids at school wearing shirts with the company name written across them and since he was pretty sure that Clint had at least _one_ of them that this was _the_ place. That every kid under the age of eighteen shopped at Hollister. It was the _cool_ place.

Nick’s entire wardrobe consisted of a badass leather trench coat that had seen better days, t-shirts from school functions, two suit jackets, dress pants, and dress shirts in the basic colors – white, black, navy, and gray. Other than the random Christmas gift from Romanoff (Barton always bought ties, _always_ ) that was it.

He didn’t know clothes and he knew even less about the clothes that a teenage girl was supposed to find cool. Clint and Natasha did their own shopping and he had never been more thankful for that than he was at this exact moment.

He regretted taking her there almost immediately.

He should have taken May over to a fucking toy store or something. American Eagle would have been fine, probably, but not fucking _Hollister._

There was music loud enough that it was almost im-fucking-possible to think and the perfume coming off the stupid tiki hunt entrance was enough to suffocate an asthmatic. Where was the logic in having the lights be _that_ low?

That was a safety hazard at the very least and a lawsuit he hoped would one day shut down this stupid place at best.

Were the lights so low so that young kids with their parent’s credit cards shouldn’t see how unhappy everyone was or was it so they didn’t see the shitty quality of their stupid ass shirts.

The mannequin wasn’t even wearing a proper shirt. That was a sheet of fabric with a button on it.

Clothes were stupid.

Very, very stupid.

And Hollister was the stupidest of it all.

“Here,” Nick said placing the S.H.I.E.L.D. credit card in her hand because he refused, absolutely refused.

He rather be tortured, he was not going into that damn place. He’d rather invade Syria or Jupiter, fight space aliens or robots. He’d rather be lobotomized than spend a second longer inside of a fucking Hollister.

“You buy what you want. Get whatever you need and want, don’t feel the need to hold out because that’s you-know-whose. And screw them, right?”

She blinked up at him.

“Right,” He answered himself. “I’m going to be down there.”

He pointed down in the direction of the other end of the mall, “To see about getting you a phone because, quite frankly, a black man in an eyepatch following a short Asian girl, who looks like she could possibly be thirteen, around Victoria Secret is weird and likely to get the cops called.”

He almost got a smile at that, a little up-curl of the right corner of her lip for a split second. He’d take it as a win.

“It’s almost eleven o’clock, so I’ll see you in an hour and then I’ll meet you at the food court and we’ll get lunch. Make sure you try everything on – pants, shoes, whatever. I don’t think either of us want to come back to this dump.”

She nodded and then turned on her heels in the direction of a less _stupid_ store, which Nick found relieving because honestly, fuck Hollister.

He waited for her to disappear from the shop before he left to go deal with his task. A task that he was much more suited for than helping a teenage girl find some clothes.

Nick took his time walking to the other side of the mall where he would undoubtedly have to deal with an overly-cheery sales person at the phone company, trying to get him to buy things that he didn’t need. It would still be better than Hollister though.

He just needed to buy the damn thing.

It took Nick less time than he thought it would.

The perks of being at the mall during school hours, he guessed. Nick had forty mintues before May was supposed to meet him, which was fine.

It was all _fine,_ Nick decided as he added his number into the phone. He added in Barton and Romanoff’s, as well as a few other people’s into May’s new phone.

He couldn’t help the feeling of dread pooling in his gut because May was the daughter of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, spies probably, who watched her parents be killed but was not killed herself. She was a person of interest to S.H.I.E.L.D. and was probably having her every movement tracked. She had panic attacks about Bahrain and a million other oddities and suspicions that made her _weird._

Nick didn’t have a goddamn clue on what any of that meant because it was _classified_. He didn’t know anything surrounding her, didn’t know if she was in danger of if she _was_ danger.

He just knew that like Clint and like Natasha, he felt the fierce need to see her happy and fed, and safe, and he needed her to know that she was not alone in this world because Nick Fury had been alone. He was alone and if he could form an odd little family after losing everything than so could she.

She didn’t know that though, she didn’t know that he was not the enemy and because of that, the dread remained like a lead ball in his stomach. There was no reason – absolutely no reason for her not to have walked out the door the moment she disappeared from his sight.

The ring of his phone pulled him out of his thoughts. He pulled the thing from his pocket and answered the call, “Fury. Who is this?”

“It’s Hill,” The voice replied. “Don’t you check your caller ID, like ever?”

“What do you want, Hill?” Nick asked. “School still in one piece?”

“Nope, I personally mixed Fitzsimmons’ latest project with Banner’s gamma thing and everything went kaboom,” Maria, spoke, using all the technical terms, as always. “Everything is fine. Summers’ went home with a migraine, I think.”

“Hmm,” Nick hummed. “Any reason, you’re calling?”

“I graded Melinda’s test.”

“She goes by May.”

“ _May_ did well.”

“Well?” Nick asked.

“More than well.”

“Stop drawing this out, Hill,” Nick put a stop to her game.

“She did exceptional in foreign languages, knocked out Spanish, French, German, Mandarin, and Japanese,” Maria read off. “She tested out of taking a foreign language, Nick. Like Romanoff. Math score was high. Not Fitz high or anything but above average. English was decent. Science was okay. History was lacking.”

“I don’t think she spent a lot of time in America,” Nick supplied because why would international spies (or whatever) spend the time to teach their daughter American history, or anything that wasn’t relevant to the task at hand.

“You don’t think?” Maria asked. “Shouldn’t you know?”

“What else, Maria?”

“We’re going to put her in AP English, Koenig’s class since her score was good. No foreign language, I don’t see the point if she already knows the ones we offer, unless she wants to do a course with Xavier.”

Maria sighed, “Then it’s just Calculus, Biology – AP Bio if she wants it. Put her in Clint and Natasha’s gym class so she’ll know someone. Art?”

“Might as well.”

“She’ll have one free period then, without a foreign language.”

“Leave it,” Nick replied. “We’ll let her have her first day and then she can decide what she wants to take.”

“What are her hobbies?” Maria asked, trying to knock this out while she was already working on it.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Maria sounded shocked. “Do you know anything about this girl?”

“Yeah, her favorite color is blue.”

“Nick-“

“Look,” Nick snapped because this was getting really annoying, really fast. “She’s been at my place for a day and she didn’t exactly come with a filled questionnaire.”

“Yeah, okay,” Maria apologized. “Sorry.”

“I’ve got to go,” Nick responded in a voice that let Maria know that he’d already dropped it and forgot about it. “I can see May now.”

It was a lie, Nick just didn’t want to continue the discussion about the frustrating lack of information he had on Melinda May. He already had S.H.I.E.L.D. on his ass, he didn’t need Maria Hill there as well.

He only had to wait another ten minutes before he saw her during one of his scans of the inhabitants of the food court – consisting mostly of young mothers and a plethora of strollers and binkies. She was holding bags, a lot but not as much as Natasha would have if she was told to go wild with S.H.I.E.L.D. funding.

“What would you like to eat?” Nick asked after she sat down, dropping the bags under the small table.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Here,” Nick spoke as he pulled her phone from his pocket. “I’ve already put in my number, which you can call about anything, no questions asked. Clint and Nat are in there as well. I also gave you the number to Maria Hill, she’s the assistant principal so if you need to contact me and I’m not answering, call her.”

Melinda nodded, taking the phone from his hand gently so not to actually touch him. Nick noticed that she had two of her fingernails painted, one a dark shade of purple and the other black.

It was an oddly normal feeling to know that she had bought nail polish.

“Thank you,” She said softly, meeting his eyes with gratitude.

“I’m here to help,” Nick told her seriously. “So now, what do you want to eat?  I know you probably have no appetite but you’ll feel worse if you don’t eat something.”

She looked up at that and he stated plainly, “You’ve had an orange since coming to my place.”

“We have breakfast.”

“Which you didn’t eat,” Nick pointed out. “I noticed.”

“Chinese,” She responded, not seeing the point in arguing much to Nick’s absolute pleasure. He didn’t know if he’d hold up if she had decided to fight back. He got what she wanted and ordered the food.

“Where are you from?” Nick asked suddenly. May paused with her chopsticks halfway before her carton and her mouth. It would have been amusing if Nick didn’t really want to know the answer.

_‘Hell, it was still amusing.’_

“We spent a lot of time in Canada, off-mission, but my father is from Pennsylvania, second generation, my mother is from Hong Kong,” May answered after a moment deciding that the answer could not be used against her later. “I was born in Macau.”

“Macau, I’ve been there.”

She nodded and went back to eating.

“Miss Hill called,” Nick said from lack of something better to say. “Your results on the placement test were good. History was less great but we can improve on it. We’ve got you a schedule that could be tweaked if needed.”

Melinda nodded in understanding.

“I know that I’m piling a lot onto you,” Nick stated. “And starting high school in the middle of the year, especially having never been to high school, can be stressful. So, if you’re feeling overwhelmed at any point tomorrow, you can take to me or Maria. Miss Potts is a great guidance counselor and she’d be-“

“I don’t need a counselor.”

“Well, just in case. Her office is in the main office,” Nick finished. “And you don’t have to decide right away but I typically make my kids do an extracurricular activity after school because I typically stay late and it’s healthier than lying around Clint does archery.”

May didn’t say anything. If it was because she didn’t have anything to say or because she didn’t want to, Nick wasn’t sure.

“We’ll figure it out tomorrow.”

 


	6. All I Want

Clint was rubbing the side of his face into the plush cushions of a black chair in Nick’s office, like a cat.

“It’s too early,” He whined, though neither Natasha, who was applying her mascara using the computer screen at Nick’s desk, or May, who was flipping through a pamphlet on the wonderous clubs and sports teams with little interest in the chair next to him, was paying him any mind. “It should be illegal to get up this early.”

“Clint, it’s seven o’clock,” Natasha stated as she plunged the sticky brush back into its tube. “You’re up at seven o’clock anyways.”

“But I had to get out of bed at _six in the morning,_ ” He said the words like they were poison.

“You got up at six forty,” May said quietly, not looking up from the brief description of the Quiz Bowl team.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Clint drew the word out, meeting Natasha’s eyes with a ‘did-she-just-talk-and-it-was-to-me’ look in his own eyes. “But I was supposed to get up at six.”

“But you didn’t,” Natasha pointed out. “And did you get dressed in the dark, Barton?”

“Huh?”

“You’re wearing two completely different shoes.”

Sure enough, with a disbelieving look at his feet, he was.

One was a purple high top and the other a ratty tennis shoe. Natasha laughed crackled from behind Nick’s desk when his mouth dropped open in surprise, and even May’s lips tilted up into an amused smirk.

“Why didn’t you say anything before?”

“I thought this would be funnier,” Natasha responded, trying and failing to stop the smirk appearing on her lips. “And would you look at that, it is.”

“This is your fault, all of your fault,” Clint grumbled to May with no real anger to it. He ran his hand through his already disheveled hair, trying to remember if he had different shoes in his locker. “You should have come on Friday.”

May raised an eyebrow at him.

“If you would have come on Friday then your tour of this _place_ ,” He waved his hand in the air – gesturing to the school building as a whole, “would have happened on the weekend at a decent time and not _seven_. Where’s Fury anyways?”

“Having a ‘serious’ discussion with Miss Hill,” Natasha replied, motioning with her hand at Nick glaring at Maria on the other side of the office doors. “Probably about having you meet with the guidance counselor, May.”

“He did that with Tasha,” Clint said.

Natasha added, “And with you.”

“It didn’t work.”

“Not at all.”

“He’s probably not going to make you do it,” Clint told May. “Tasha gave Miss Hill a black eye their first meeting.”

“First and only,” Natasha added with a proud smile. “And that was _totally_ an accident, unlike what you did.”

“That was an accident, too.”

“He busted all the basketballs in the gym,” She told May, rolling her eyes slowly at the thought of it. “With arrows.”

“ _On accident,”_ Clint added. “I don’t like basketball anyways. Nat broke someone’s arm.”

“Not an accident,” She said with a laugh that had Clint giggling. “Fury will probably get-“

“No, he won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I asked.”

“That’s so stupid.”

“I know!”

“What are you-“ May began to ask as Nick gestured for them to come to him.

“Oh, Nick wants us,” Clint interrupted. Natasha glared at him because May’s word count was like fourteen and interrupting her was not really the way to encourage her to raise it.

He gave Clint and Natasha instructions to show May where her classes were and where the cafeteria was, and which girls’ bathrooms had paper towels instead of hand dryers. And to not – _I mean it, Romanoff_ – put a bucket of water over Sitwell’s door _again_.

 

“Did you grab the calculator off the kitchen table?”

“Yes.”

“Locker combo?”

“Yes.”

“Is it memorized?”

“Yes.”

“A pen?”

“Three.”

“Do you know where your first class is?”

“ _Yes_.”

Nick looked up to that because there was something in that, an emotion to it.

May was standing in front of him with her hair curled at the bottom, a leather jacket over black jeans, and she was _annoyed_ with him.

“Would you like to just go to class?” He asked with an amused smirk. Barton and Romanoff had already taken off ten minutes before to go meet up with their friends and to try to see if they could do something about Clint’s shoe problem.

“Yes, I would.”

And with that she nodded once and then made her leave, still as quiet as ever.

Nick thought that despite everything with May, she wouldn’t be anything to worry about. She was not Barton with his mouth or Natasha with her fist.

She was quiet and shy like the little girl in the picture, and despite the switch from school uniform to leather jacket, Nick thought that he might just see that girl returning.

Or not.

 

Not three minutes after May made her way out of his office, he was called down to deal with the metal detectors.

Marvel High School wasn’t a bad school but it was not perfect. The metal detectors were solely precaution, and precaution was necessary when your student body was made up of a bunch of child geniuses and government agents’ children. Nick had learned that it was better to be safe than sorry, especially when it came to the lives of children.

And again, school ran by S.H.I.E.L.D. screw-ups so it was probably best to take all the precautions you could.

Despite the detectors never having caught anything worse than a Swiss army knife (granted a lot of Swiss Army knives, like _a lot_ , like where do you even find so many Swiss Army knives?), they cause Nick trouble. Particularly for the reason he was walking there now.

“Nick to see you again, Fury,” Logan all but growled at him, stripped of him shoes and his leather jacket. Nick sometimes wondered if Logan knew how to do anything other than growl.

“What is it this time?”

“This bozo won’t let me through,” Logan whined, in a whiny-growly way that only he could manage.

Nick directed his one eyed stare to the guard and asked, “Why not?”

“He’s new,” Logan grumbled.

_‘Ah.’_

“He keeps setting off the machines.”

“He does that,” Fury replied.

“Sir, I can’t let him through,” The young guard said because he took his job _very_ serious. Nick like that, especially considering this guy looked to be civie and not a S.H.I.E.L.D. washout.

“Look,” Nick said to the guard because Logan was a special case. He walked through the metal detector and set it off. “I’ve got metal plates in my knee from an IED and these things are temperamental. Logan’s got more metal in him than that deathtrap motorcycle of his.”

“An accident,” Logan added vaguely as he stalked past the guard and down the hall.

Fury asked, “Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

Nick left, followed down the hallway after Logan with plans of going back to his office and enjoying his morning coffee.

Five minutes.

It had been five minutes since May left his office. Just five minutes and then a boy collided with him with enough force to nearly send him back on his ass.

It was another ten seconds before Nick realized that he currently had a death grip on the arm of Ian Quinn. Nick let go once he straightened up. Quinn had a bloody nose that was gushing over his hands.

“What the hell is going on?” Fury demanded. Just because there were fights at MHS, didn’t mean that he didn’t deal with them like the ex-military, ex-spy son of a bitch that he was.

Quinn was mumbling nonsense about his nose being broken – it probably was – and blood on his crisp white dress shirt.

“Quinn,” Fury warned because people were apparently _fighting in his goddamn hallways_.

Quinn pointed down the hall with a bloody hand to the crowd of students that started to gather. Somewhere in Nick’s mind registered that the late bell had run and wondered how many teachers were going to be giving their students detention for being late. “Go to the nurse, now.”

“Get to class,” Fury shouted, a demand that got immediate results as students decided that class sounded a hell of a lot better than dealing with a Nick Fury death glare or his soldier voice. Nick pushed his way through the kids into an opening.

“Damn it,” He muttered to himself as the scene opened before him.

Marcus Daniels had May in a headlock, the blood leaking from a cut on her lip smeared across her cheek while John Garrett stood in front of her. His big meaty hand was raised into a fight, like he was going to punch her.

Raina, with a rip in the sleeve of her flower dress, standing back away from the fighting and holding a hand to her left eye. The contents of her backpack were thrown across the floor like she had been the one throwing it.

Nick noticed that May’s hand, which was clawing at Daniel’s arm, was smeared with blood. It was likely her who punched Quinn and by _likely,_ he meant most definitely.

He was about to call a stop to it, had his mouth open and everything, but before he could get a word out, May kicked Garrett hard in the shoulder with both feet and knocked him back into Raina. They both went back into the lockers.

And before Nick could react to that or register the shocked look on the faces of Clint and Banner across the hall, May – 5’4, 115 pounds soaking wet _maybe,_ Melinda May – bashed the back of her head into the nose of Daniel’s. She used his own momentum when he stumbled back and then rushed her, to flip him over her head. His back smacked against the floor hard enough that it made even Nick feel winded.

Garrett was back and steady on his feet, yanking May’s hair and slamming her face first into the lockers but that didn’t stop her. Struggling against his grasp, she managed to turn herself so her back was against the locker with Garrett leaning over her.

“You think that you can just-“ was all Garrett got out before he was kneed in the groin and pushed away from her.

She went to kick him, her foot aiming for his head but Garrett caught the limb seconds from impact. Melinda, after a smirk that promised pain, had swung her other leg and corkscrewed in the air with all the grace of the ballerinas in Natasha’s dance class. Her foot connected with Garrett’s face, dropping him to the worn tiles in an inelegant heap.

Melinda landed on her feet in a crouched position before straightening up and pushing her hair out of her face with the same cold look Nick saw in her eyes on that first day they met.

May sidestepped the geography book that flew past her face. She followed the book with dead eyes of disinterest as it slammed against the locker and split onto the floor before turning her gaze to the person that threw it, Raina.

“May,” Nick stated as she progressed onto the flower-dressed girl. Nick would give it to Raina, she stood her ground even in the face of May’s ice glare.

May’s gaze found his eyes before bouncing around the hall like she was just realizing where she was. Something in her posture changed, something less predatorily overtook her, making her look small and young as her eyebrows pulled together in confusion.

She turned to Nick, opening her mouth to speak but she made a not a sound.

 _‘So, so stupid,’_ Nick thought because you should never turn your back on an enemy, even when those enemies were high school students. She should know that.

 _‘Her parents should have taught her that,’_ He thought before realizing that maybe they never got the chance to tell her.

Riana raised her hands with another textbook held in her grasp over her head.

Clint yelled May’s name at the same time Nick shouted for Raina to drop it but none of that really mattered because in less than a second, Melinda had already rounded on her and kicked. Standing with her fist up and the hell of her boot crushing down on Garrett’s hand as Raina fell to the ground.

“How did you even do that?” Someone yelled over the sound of John Garrett swearing at May as he pried his hand out from under her boot.

“Everybody,” Nick said slowly and loudly, letting his annoyance and his frustration slip into his voice so that he made it pretty fucking clear that he was not dealing with this shit today. “Get. To. Class.”

And that worked, it always worked.

He was, after all, still Nick Fury.

The hall cleared out soon enough, except for Garrett who was finally picking himself up off the floor and Daniels who was keeping Raina on her feet. Clint stayed rooted to his shot despite Banner telling him to move.

“Barton, class now-“ Nick didn’t even spare him a glance as his eyes scanned over May for injuries. She was breathing hard and the tight grip that her hands had on her elbows suggested that maybe she was a little shaken up but nonetheless, didn’t seem to be injured much to Nick’s relief.

“Fury,” Clint said, his voice coated in both awe and concern.

“Clint,” Nick warned.

“Okay, fine, whatever,” Barton muttered, the awe in his voice replaced with a nasal irritation. “I’m _going_.”

Once Barton uprooted himself and glared at Fury one last time, he stormed off down the hall with Banner right behind him.

“Okay, what the hell-“

“JOHN!” Echoed around the hallway, followed by loud hurried footsteps that put Melinda on edge again.

Nick rolled his eyes as Grant Ward came barreling down the hallway. He came to a full stop once he saw Fury glaring back at him.

“Garrett,” Ward huffed as he took in stock the forming bruises on the side of Garrett’s face. “What the hell?”

“What the hell, indeed,” Fury grounded out. “Which of you idiots are going to tell me what the hell you thought you were doing fighting in my hallway.”

No one said anything.

Nick let the frustration coat his voice, “May?”

She didn’t even spare him a glance from where she was leaning against the lockers with her arms across her chest. She didn’t even so much as wipe the blood from her cheek.

“Garrett? Raina? Daniels? Anything want to tell me why Quinn has a broken nose? Anybody?”

Not a word, just heavy breathing and Riana’s muffled cry.

“Ward, take Raina to the nurse then get to class,” Fury commanded. “The rest of you to my office. Now.”

Ward, who had been examining the boot print on the side of Garrett’s face, nodded to Fury before he took Raina’s hand and pulled her towards Dr. Steintin’s office.

“Did I stutter, go!” Fury pointed down the hall to emphasize his point, prompting Garrett and Daniels to drag themselves to their feet and down the hall with their heads hung low.

May didn’t so much as move an inch. She was still standing stock still, staring daggers into the locker opposite her.

“May, let’s go,” Fury said as Garrett and Daniels disappeared around the corner. She didn’t move. “Melinda.”

Nick put his hand on her shoulder, which in hindsight was a terrible idea. Her hands struck out and he blocked the first blow but not the second, ending up shoved into a locker with his arm twisted behind his back.

“Melinda.”

With that, she let go and Nick was free to move his arm again. When he turned around, he was actually surprised that she was still standing there, having expected her to bolt the moment she let go.

“Come on,” He said, not touching her. “My office. You know where it is.”

She moved, ducking her head as she took her leave but not offering Fury any actual words. Once she disappeared around the corner, Nick shook out his arm and wondered what his life had become that he was being shoved against lockers by a teenage girl.

“Having fun?” Someone voiced from behind him.

Nick was seriously starting to question when he had stopped being so paranoid that he didn’t even realize that someone had walked down the hall in the first place. Let alone, that he was letting little girls get the jump on him.

“Don’t you have a job to do, Hand?”

“I ran into Quinn.”

“I’m handling.”

“It looks like it’s handling you, sir.”

He grounded out through clenched teeth, “Hand.”

“You better make sure that they aren’t down there killing each other,” Victoria pointed out, her heels clicking as she traveled back into the direction that she had come.

He could hear the smirk on her voice when she called over her shoulder, “You know how pissed off Maria gets when they get blood on the floor.

 


	7. Your Problem

“Send in Garret,” Nick said, biting down a sigh as Daniels limped out the door. “And go to the nurse.”

John Garrett was a big man – no, kid. Child, really. A child with large arms and hands that he used to punch people and terrorize even small children. He was an asshole, in Nick’s very professional opinion, and he hated having to deal with the kid.

Also, his stupid turtlenecks somehow irritated Nick beyond everything else.

“Sit down,” Nick stated as the door opened, not looking up from the detention form that he was filing out for Marcus Daniels.

“They’re calling her The Cavalry.”

It was far too early for all this bullshit, Nick sighed as he rubbed at his temples. He sighed, “Maria.”

“As far as nicknames go, The Cavalry isn’t that bad, I guess. Better than mine in high school.”

“What?”

“That’s what they’re calling her.”

“May?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Great_.”

“So, are you going to tell me what happened out there?” Maria asked, sitting down across from him.

“I don’t _know_ what happened,” Nick admitted. “Daniels said that May attacked them and you know Garrett and his merry band of sociopaths are going to say the same thing. But-“

“You don’t believe that.”

It was not a question. She knew.

“Should I have any reason to believe that? It is not like Garrett hasn’t started shit just like this before with other students.”

“How does one person take out four people at once, alone, and their hair still look that good?”

“You’ve done it.”

“I’m a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.”

“She’s clever.”

“Yeah, she’s got some skills,” Maria agreed. “Did you know she could fight?”

“No.”

“Okay, so, other than her favorite color being blue and she’s good at foreign languages, what do you actually know about this girl?”

“She grew up in Canada.”

“What else?”

Nick didn’t respond, choosing instead to finish the form.

Maria sighed, “Then how can you know that she did not start the fight? She’s new, maybe she was just trying to make a name for herself.”

“That’s not it, Hill.”

“How do you know?”

He snapped, “She would have been taught to keep her head down.”

“What?”

“I just know, Hill.”

“Nick, you don’t know anything about this girl! Just because she lives with you does not mean that her intents were pure of heart and it does not bar her from bad behavior. I know, Garrett is a dick but maybe she _did_ attack him. You don’t even know if that isn’t normal behavior for her because you don’t-“

“Her parents are dead,” He cut into her tirade with a pained tired sigh. He did not feel that it was his place to tell people, it was May’s pain and her trauma, and it should be her choice to share that. Not his.

It was just another breach of trust that he should never had trampled over.

“I’m sorry, what?” Maria asked, taken back.

“Her parents are dead,” He repeated. “They were killed and that is why she’s living with me.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, it was recently.”

“How do you not know?” Maria asked incredulously. “Surely, someone from your foster agency lets you know those things.”

“She...” Nick began, then paused. He decided to, for once, tell Maria the whole truth. “Nothing I saw leaves this room, okay?”

“Do you want me to pink promise, too?” She asked sarcastically as Nick got up and locked the door. He ignored the jab and the curious confusion that troubled her features.

“She’s not from the foster agency.”

“Then where-“

“I don’t know when or how her parents died because it’s classified.”

“Classified,” She repeated dryly. “Classified by who?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“I _knew_ it.”

“I got a knock on my door from Sawyer a few weeks ago about a girl that knows too much. She watched her parents be tortured, or at least, they think she might have. From the medical reports it looked like… it wasn’t good.”

“My god,” Maria muttered.

“They were spies, I think, I’m not sure. They won’t tell me shit except that I need to get what she knows because she’s not talking about it. I asked her on her first night, ‘ _what happened in Bahrain.’_ She panicked. She sleeps under her bed and she’s not eating unless I force her too. I didn’t know she could fight because she doesn’t trust me enough to _tell_ me anything.”

“Nick, you can’t-“

“What?” He asked, a laugh in his voice. “Tell S.H.I.E.L.D.? That’s what I told her. I’m not interested in what S.H.I.E.L.D. wants, but you know how they are–“ _and she did_ “–I don’t plan to tell them shit about what she tells me unless its potentially lifesaving, and she liked that. I thought I was making progress.”

“And?”

“And then S.H.I.E.L.D. was standing in my kitchen and she doesn’t trust me.”

“Nick, that doesn’t mean that she didn’t start the fight.”

“Her parents would have taught her to keep a low profile,” Nick stated.

“That _doesn’t_ -“

“I saw the look in her eyes, Maria.”

That shut her up because Maria knew the look, knew _that look_ , the one that took you miles away from the present. The look that you could practically see them drowning in the dark pools of their pupils just trying to escape whatever hell their mind concocted.

Anybody that had seen combat, service, the field knew the look so Maria knew the look because she’d experienced it firsthand. She had watched Nick down in his own dark pools.

She knew as well as he did that when the water came up too far, when it seeped into your shoes and dragged you under, that you go to autopilot. You let your body do the work because your mind took a raincheck, you fight to survive.

“She wasn’t there,” He said. “She might have been fighting Garrett, kicking his ass really.”

He smirked a little at that because _damn_ , she really did kick his ass. He shouldn’t be proud of that.

“But she was miles away,” He continued. “She could have thrown the first punch but I doubt she did. I don’t think she would have been looking for a fight.”

“What are you going to do with them then?”

“Detention. All of them. Two weeks.”

“Fair enough, I guess,” Maria shrugged. “You know who’s good with people like Melinda? You should have her talk to-“

“No.”

“Why?”

“I’m handling it.”

“Are you really?” Maria asked with a smirk that told Nick that she had been speaking to Hand. Nick rolled his eyes as she threw open the door and shouted for Garret to, “Get in this damn office, now!”

He swaggered in like the stupid pile of bricks that he was, with his stupid turtleneck and a smirk that made Nick want to wipe it from his face the way Peggy Carter did with unruly trainees.  He thought that maybe if he Garrett had been at the school from the beginning than he would have a better understanding of how to deal with the kid by now.

Garrett wasn’t someone Clint went to school with in middle school and he didn’t start high school with Natasha. He was a problem kid that Fury didn’t have the summer to figure out how to handle or years to learn to. He just had a burning desire to knock the kid’s teeth down his throat and didn’t even feel bad about it.

“Sit down,” Maria commanded, slamming the door behind him. “Now tell me, do you get off on beating up little girls?”

Garrett offered her a smarmy smirk, “She started it.”  

“Really?” Nick asked unimpressed.

“Yes, sir, she hauled off and punched Quinn in the nose.”

“She got a nice kick to your face too,” Maria observed.

“Lucky shit.”

“And Quinn? What did he do?”

“Nothing, sir,” He said, self-satisfaction evident in his face and his voice. It made Nick’s entire mind feel like it was forced to shut down and reboot.

It really was a testament to his own self-control that _he_ didn’t haul off and punch Garrett in the nose. There was really so much self-control coming from this side of the room. He deserved a goddamn cookie.

“Do you want to add anything else?”

“No, sir.”

“Get lost, Garrett,” Fury growled, composure snapping for one unruly second. “Go to class. Let the football coach know that you’ll be spending your practice time in detention for the next two weeks.”

The lumberjack stood up, smirking like a shark as he left the room without a word.

“I hate that son of a bitch,” Maria muttered as Nick pushed his chair back and stood up.

He moved around the desk and approached the door, “Me too.”

“He makes my skin crawl.”

Nick stared out pass the glass in the door as Garrett said something to May on the way out the office’s door. Pepper, who was seated next to May, glared disapprovingly as he went.

May, for her part, was sitting in her chair with a scowl across her features. Nick found it amusing, just for a moment he could imagine that she was just a regular kid. Just for a moment.

“Miss Potts,” He greeted as he walked towards the two.

“Mr. Fury,” She greeted back, lifting her clipboard. “I’ll need you to sign these.”

She handed him a stack of folders with the Stark Logo on the cover, no doubt Howard wanted to once again make renovations to the chemistry labs.

“But seeing how you have your hands full, take your time,” She continued to smile. “As long as your time is by the end of the day.”

“Of course, Miss Potts. May, follow me,” Nick said, turning back towards his office. He did not hear her get up and, really, he was just grateful that she had listened to him. His authority had already been questioned enough for one day and first period wasn’t even over yet.

As he sat down, he noticed that she did follow him and that she had foregone the chairs in favor of standing in front of his desk with her arms crossed behind her back. Her head was held high and her shoulders back like a soldier awaiting orders, or punishment.

“Care to tell me what happened out there?”

“No.”

“Remember when we talked about demands masquerading as questions,” Nick spoke, repeating her words back to her. “That was one of them.”

“I am aware.”

The corner of Nick’s lip flickered upwards because, of course.

 _Of course_.

She was, after all, a teenager and what did teenagers do?

They were snarky, and sarcastic, and so frustratingly difficult. Nick wasn’t sure if she was still pissed off about the MacDonald/Tucker thing or not. So yes, of course, she wasn’t going to just _tell_ him what happened, even if it did get herself out of trouble.

“You will tell me what happened,” Nick commanded, calm and firm because he couldn’t imagine that she would have gotten away with any of this shit if she was on missions with her parents. “That’s an order. “

He appeared to be right because her eyes narrowed a fraction and her jaw tightened at his words.

“I punched him first,” She stated like she was reading the weather. No bias, no justification, just the facts. It was like a fucking mission report.

“Why?” Maria asked from her seat, having not left the room.

“They were,” May began, her eyes darting to Maria for a quick second before turning back to Nick’s. She paused as if she was looking for the right words before settling on, “Bullying.”

“They were bullying you?”

“No.”

“Then-“

“The boy with the…ant farm and the girl dressed like a bee.”

“Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne,” Maria supplied.

May shrugged.

“So, then you punched Ian Quinn?” Nick asked.

“No.”

“No?”

“I told them to leave them alone,” May supplied.

“And how did that result in you breaking Quinn’s nose?” Nick asked, feeling like he was pulling teeth. She seemed to be determined to say as little as possible.

“The big one pushed me.”

“The big one?”

“Garrett.”

“So, you broke his friend’s nose? Work with me here, May, help me understand this.”

“He tried to hit me, Garrett,” May stated. “I dodged and then it got out of hand.”

She gestured to the split in her lip as if to emphasize her words and then added, “Quinn was collateral damage.”

“Will Pym and van Dyne collaborate with your story?”

She shrugged.

“I’m going to have to give you detention,” Nick told her. “Even if you were defending a student, those actions are appropriate in a school setting. Two weeks, after school. You need to find a teacher next time.”

May nodded before asking, “Can I go to class?”

 

Two class periods.

Two out of eight periods and Nick was very thankful that he didn’t have hair because he would have ripped it out by now.

Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne did collaborate with may’s story, as did Clint and Bruce, so not everything in the universe was working against him, just most of it. Barton was still being bitchy about being blown off earlier and Stark had apparently blown up the physics lab again.

And Nick had been called twice about Melinda May.

“Are you even listening to me, Principal Fury?” Sitwell’s voice questioned accusingly through the phone.

“Yep,” Fury replied as he played Tetris on his computer.

“I asked her to introduce herself to the class and she said no!” Sitwell expressed as if in a world with pizza delivery, Stark Expo, and people who kill the parents of sixteen year old girls, _that_ was the most unbelievable thing. “No!”

“I’ll give her detention,” Nick said humorlessly, appeasing to Sitwell’s desire to ruin everybody’s day.

“You do that.”

 _‘Why is he even here?’_ He mouthed, meeting Maria’s eyes through the glass in the door as Sitwell rambled on about manners and respect.

Jasper was a good agent, a top agent who had not fucked up in any way that Nick had heard of. And yet, he spent most of his time pretending to be a biology teacher at a high school.

 _‘Pierce’s eyes and ears??’_ Maria scribbled out on a piece of paper and held up.

They both rolled their eyes; that was typical Alexander Pierce.

Fury ended the call as Maria went back to whatever it was she was doing while pretending to look busy, promising to ruin May’s life, or destroy the world, or whatever it was that Sitwell was talking about.

Nick was greeted by a knock on his door moments later. It took all his self-control not to groan when Dr. Steiten walked into his office.

“That is quite a girl you have,” He said as way of greeting.

Nick rolled his eyes.

“You know, they are calling her-“

“The Cavalry, I know.”

“She sent Thor to my office.”

“Why?” Nick hated to ask.

“Sprained his wrist,” Steiten replied quickly. “Shaw is going to make her play in the next football game if she keeps injuring his players. Thor apparently grabbed her shoulder in the hallway and she ‘reacted’ as he put it. He apologized profusely and expressed great concern about her getting in trouble.”

“Of course, he did.” Thor was the human version of a golden retriever.

“Also, Miss Hill told me to tell you that Koenig called,” The doctor said as he was leaving the office. “Apparently, she skipped his class.”

Nick groaned and picke dup the phone again.

“Hola,” The voice answered.

“Send him to me,” Furry spoke and then hung up.

 

“What are your thoughts on the Cavalry?”

“I think that they played an important role in gaining our independence from the British during the Revolutionary War and-“

“What?”

“ _What?”_

“About the – where were you this morning?” Nick asked.

“I had a dentist appointment, sir.”

“What do you know about Melinda May?”

“She’s going to be our new student. Tony said that she’s part robot but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t serious.”

“She _is_ out new student. Today is her first day.”

“Oh, is she the _chica loca_ that kicked John Garrett in the face?” He asked curiously. “I thought they were talking about Natasha.”

“Nick?” Maria asked, walking into the room and completely disregarding the fact that he was currently in a meeting with someone. “Any idea on where May is?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know where she is if she’s not in class?” Nick all but shouted because _damn_ it all if today wasn’t just one big test of his patience. “I don’t have her microchipped, Hill. Get out there and go _find_ her.”

“Oh, how desperate are you?” Maria taunted as she took note of who his meeting had been with. “Very, very desperate if he’s here.”

“Maria,” Nick growled.

“I thought you were _‘handling’_ it?” She chuckled.

“I don’t even know what I’m doing here,” Coulson said truthfully, which only caused her to laugh more.

“Hill, out. I gave you a job,” Nick pointed to the door as if to emphasis how close he was to kicking her ass down to Level One.

Maria just smiled as she left the room, “Good luck, Coulson.”

“Uh, thanks?”

Nick, as he should have done the moment he heard anything about Melinda, had  pulled Phillip Coulson out of his Spanish class. Much like everybody suggested he did.

Phil Coulson was everything a principal could want in a student. He was the shining beacon in a sea of teenage angst; he was the very definition of a perfect student.

Coulson was president of student council, assistant coach of the football team, he was in Spanish club, science club (even if it was just to make sure Stark didn’t get Fitzsimmons killed or horribly disfigured), Quiz Bowl, History club, he ran the after school movie program for kids who took late buses, and he volunteered more time in the guidance office than anyone else. Phil Coulson had pull in every group, clique, and posse at Marvel High School and he used it for good.

Coulson was the most beneficial student at the school to Nick.

He was more useful to Fury as a junior in high school than the guidance counselor. Whereas Pepper Potts was brilliant at her job when dealing with people Tony Stark or Thor Odinson, she couldn’t connect with people like Melinda. And Maria, for all of her trying, rarely got through with anyone.

Coulson helped Grant Ward with his transition from abusive parents to cat-obsessed aunt. He, alone, got Romanoff to stop kicking the ass of anyone within a ten foot radius, without getting a single bruise in the process. He helped Barton through the hearing loss he never dealt with and the hearing aids, and other stuff Clint never properly came to terms with. He was the only person other than Pepper that could get Stark to listen half the time, and the one to adjust Thor to American culture. He helped Banner with his anger issues.

He made sure Fitzsimmons knew their way around the school after the move up from the middle schools. He got Skye to stop hacking into the school computers and changing the lunch to fish sticks.

And yeah, Barton still climbed through the air ducts like it was his own personal playground but he was doing it less because of Coulson.

All and all, if anyone could help May, it was Coulson. That was exactly what he told the boy who sat there with concerned eyes and a determined look.

Fury told him that May had recently lost her parents and nothing more on her past (he couldn’t exactly tell the truth, no matter how trustworthy, a high school student with the secrets of an international spy agency). Fury also told Coulson, in a voice that barred no argument, that he would appreciate (i.e. Coulson would) tell him what May said.

But as Nick predicted Coulson protested to that, even against Nick’s no nonsense voice, because Phil Coulson didn’t believe in betraying trust.

Nick shut him up by alluding that it was of the upmost importance to May’s health he did. Coulson, for his part, nodded and left with a note to go back to Spanish while Fury contemplated which level of Hell he’d end up in for lying about a girl being suicidal so someone would spy on her.

 

 


	8. The Quiet One

Phil rubbed at his jaw as he walked down the hall on the way back to his Spanish class. The soreness from the dentist remained a persistent annoyance when he heard a crash and a quite curse from the Administrations office.

He stopped outside the door, hesitating before sticking his head into the dusty office, “Mrs. Hand?”

The Administrations office was wall to ceiling filing cabinets against three of the four walls, the other being a wall of windows hidden behind dust covered blinds. It was claustrophobic in nature and appeal, feeling smaller than it had any right to be.

Mrs. Hand’s cluttered desk sat in the far right corner, overflowing with folders of various colors that needed stocked, filled out, and filed, intermixed with cups upon cups overfilled with pens of each color. There was a large table in the middle of the crowded room in a far worse state of cluttered, buried beneath scattered files and boxes that Mrs. Hand had been working on filing since Coulson came to this school.

Instead of finding the busy teacher amongst the chaos of the office, he found a short Chinese girl standing over a toppled-over box of spilled papers.

“Oh.”

“She’s at lunch,” was the only thing the girl said to him before apparently deciding that Phil was not interesting enough to pay attention to. She overturned the box before sliding it over to the back left corner of open cabinet drawers.

Phil stood, pivoting from one foot to the other in the doorway, unable to decide what he wanted to do before saying _screw it_ and entering the room.

Spanish was almost over anyways and he had a free period next. It wouldn’t kill him if he put off starting his English paper until after student counsel anyways so he picked up a pile of papers from the box and started to file them with her.

The girl in the leather jacket didn’t falter in her filing but Phil noticed the way she stiffened as he came near her and the weary glance she sent his way didn’t go amiss.

“I’m Coulson,” He said. “Phil Coulson.”

He shoved some papers into a folder as he mentally berated himself for sounding like the world’s biggest idiot, “I – Jesus, I don’t know why I said that like I was James Bond, or something. A bit lame, isn’t it? I know it was. I’m not typically that cheesy.”

“Melinda,” She said quietly over Coulson’s rambling.

“What?”

“My name is Melinda.”

“ _Oh.”_

He said that out loud. _Shit._

Now she was looking at him again with those weary eyes, like she was trying to figure out if he was worth her time or worse, if he was a _geek_.

“You’re new.”

 _‘Well great, Coulson, state some more obvious facts. Idiot.’_ He mentally cursed himself, keeping his politest and friendliest smile on his face. ‘ _She totally thinks I’m a geek now, great.’_

Of course, she _was_ the new girl. Duh.

He’d never seen her before and he’d just talked to Fury, who said that this was her first day. Not to mention, Ms. Hill did _just_ say that she was not in her classes so what-

“What are you doing in here?” Coulson asked suddenly, cutting off whatever May was going to say in response to his dumb ‘you’re new’ comment, if she was going to say anything at all.

She pointed her gaze at the bent folder in her hand before raising an eyebrow at him that practically scoffed _what does it look like?_

“I mean, why are you in here?” He rephrased. “And not in class?”

“It is quiet in here,” She answered softly, not taking her eyes off the task at hand.

Well, she wasn’t wrong. Coulson could practically _feel_ the quietness closing in on them. Mrs. Hand’s office always felt like being in a time bubble where everything moved at a fraction of a second.

“Does Mrs. Hand know?” He asked, very aware that they might be in massive trouble for messing up her system if she didn’t, like life-threatening trouble. Phil was pretty sure that she would actually kill them.

“Yes.”

_Oh._

“Oh, that’s good.”

Melinda didn’t talk much, he found.

She expressed herself more in a series of eye rolls, tiny smiles, and raised eyebrows instead of actual words, which was fine with Coulson. Though, he did find it a little daunting when their one-sided conversation dwindled down and they were left with only dusty old silence that felt both relieving and suffocating all at once, so he filled it.

Rambling on about everything from the football team and student council to her maybe eating lunch with him tomorrow to his ‘awesome but slightly embarrassing to talk about’ collection of Captain America trading card.

“And it’s just _so cool,_ ” Coulson said excited. “That they found him in the ice, _finally_. I always knew that they would, eventually, but alive! Wow. And apparently well. The newspapers don’t say what he’s up to but I hope he’s well and everything.”

“He works for S.H.I.E.L.D.,” May stated, pausing in her filing to look at him with confusion coating her eyes, like Phil should have known that.

This was a S.H.I.E.L.D. school after all, wasn’t it?

_‘And he should know that because he was Captain America’s biggest fan, apparently.’_

“Who?”

“Steve Rogers.”

“Works for S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“I… nevermind,” She said after a pause that he didn’t fill with his inane chatter. She directed her eyes back down to the files.

“No, tell me,” He pleaded. “Please?”

“I-“ She paused, red flashing lights going off in her mind, _confidential._ He didn’t have the clearance. “I read it online, I think, so maybe it wasn’t true.”

“Oh.”

Phil looked disappointed, like maybe she had crushed a weirdly personal dream of his. Who knew, maybe she _did_. She didn’t know him. Maybe his dreams consisted of Captain America in his stars and spangles beating up terrorist or space pirates, or something.

She looked away from him but didn’t return to filing.

“I should go,” She said because she had ruined everything and Coulson had a stupid disappointed face. It was awkward, and she felt weird. She shouldn’t care about disappointing someone she didn’t know.

“Don’t.”

He grabbed onto her arm to stop her from walking away. It was nothing very hard but from how skittish Clint and Natasha had been, he probably should have expected her to elbow him in the nose. Or punch him. Or flip him over the table.

But none of that happened.

She didn’t so much as jerk away as welted under his touch.

A hiss filled the quiet room, breaking the otherworldly bubble of the office with the pain-laced sound. Her left hand gripped onto the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles turned white and her usually stoic expression was pinched and pained.

“Oh my god, what did I do?” Phil asked, stepping back. He held his hands up, wanting nothing more than to make sure that she was okay but feared hurting her if he touched her.

Jesus, was he really strong or did she have bird bones?

“Oh god, you were in a fight earlier, weren’t you?” He realized. “Shit, okay, you’re hurt! You’re not dying, are you?”

“Coulson.”

“Head injuries are so common, I – I’ll text my friend, Simmons. She’s kind of like a doctor. Except, I mean, she’s _not_ because she’s fourteen but she’s a genius. Where’s my phone?”

“ _Phil.”_ Her right hand squeezed around his wrist just tight enough to stop his panicked search through his pockets.

He breathed, “Yes?”

“Be quiet.”

But – you’re _hurt_.”

“I’m fine.”

“Yeah, you don’t look fine,” He said, crossing his arms. “Let me see.”

Melinda looked at him skeptically but Phil was persistent, holding his hand out for her to show him her wrist. He looked as though he was willing to stand there forever if she didn’t so she rolled her eyes and then slowly shed her leather jacket to reveal her swollen wrist.

He cursed.

“It’s broken.”

“It’s sprained.”

“This – it’s _broken_ ,” Phil repeated. “I’m getting the nurse.”

“No.”

She said the word with such finality that Coulson knew that if he went against her now than he would never have a chance to get to know her. He would become an enemy to her when he wanted to be her friend.

“What are we going to do then? We can just leave it untreated.”

“Get ice.”

“What? From where?” Melinda raised an eyebrow at him and pointedly looked past him. Coulson followed her gaze out the half-blinded window behind Mrs. Hand’s desk to the teacher’s lounge door.

“I’m not allowed in there.”

May gave him an incredulous look. A look that clearly said _well, you’re going_ , and _I’ll kick your ass even with a broken arm,_ and _you’re not allowed to skip class either but here we are._

It was a very expressive look.

Coulson rolled his eyes, muttering an _‘I’ll be back’_ and then an _‘That was not a Terminator quote’_ before shuffling out of the room.

The teacher’s lounge was not empty, much to his absolute dismay.

Didn’t these people have class to teach? It wasn’t even a lunch period yet.

Phil didn’t find Mrs. Hand’s red and black hair among the teachers or see Mr. Sitwell, who threw a fit if a student so much as glanced vaguely in the direction of the teacher’s lounge.

He forced his mouth to twist into a smile at a passing teacher, nodding to another like he was supposed to be there, “Hi. Hey. Hello.”

“Coulson.”

Phil did not startle. He didn’t.

If Maria saw him startle than she was clearly delusional because if he startled than it meant that he was hiding something, and he _wasn’t_. He was just in the teacher’s lounge for a total legitimate and teacher-approved reason. She might have startled a little hop from him because she appeared out of nowhere but that was all.

She had her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised, “What are you doing?”

“Um,” He said. “I, uh, need ice.”

_‘Be honest, that’s what Cap would do.’_

“For what?”

“Melinda,” He answered, technically the truth.

“Oh?” Maria said and then smiled. “You found her then?”

Phil shook his head yes.

“Why do you need the ice?”

“Drinks!” Phil responded with the first thing that popped into his head ( _well_ , the second thing because the first thing was definitely ‘for a broken arm, please help me.’).

_‘Sorry, Cap, but if you can sass Peggy Carter and jump out of airplanes without a parachute than I can tell a little white lie.’_

Maria didn’t respond, just reached into the freezer and pulled out an ice tray with star shaped ice cubes before returning to the conversation she had been having. Coulson gratefully took the tray and sighed in relief before casually, darting out of the room.

He reentered the office, “Now what?”

“Hand me that tape,” May responded, pointing in the direction of the desk as she grabbed rulers off the table.

Coulson did as he was told and came quickly to meet her at the table, bearing ice and tape. May nodded, “I need your help.”

“Okay,” Phil breathed, looking into her eyes. Other than the tightness around them from the pain, her face was an expressionless mask.

“Tape these rulers to my arm,” She stated calmly. No panic in her voice or her eyes, it relaxed Coulson a bit. He pulled her sleeve back over the swollen flesh and taped the rulers to it as best he could with shaky hands. “That’s good. Good job.”

 _Oh_ , wasn’t that funny. She was reassuring him when she was the one with the broken arm.

“That’s going to stabilize it?”

“It should.”

“What about the ice?”

“Um.” Her eyes searched the room quickly before she snatched up a bag of old pink slips and dumped it out. “Put it in here.”

He did as he was directed, placing the makeshift icepack onto her arm and causing her to hiss at the sudden coldness. She explained to him, “It will reduce the swelling.”

“Are you alright?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

She didn’t respond to him, too busy undoing the buttons on her jacket sleeves to pay him any mind. She slid her arm back into her much looser sleeve, ice pack and all, before turning her gaze to him. “Thank you.”

The bell rung, signaling the end of the day and Phil had only just realized that he’d skipped all of his remaining classes to have a one-sided conversation with a girl that was clearly crazy. He didn’t even make any actually progress of getting to know her.

“Okay,” He said, running his fingers through his hair. “Okay, other than the apparent first aid, or whatever. Is there anything else I should know about you?”

“I used to fly planes.”

Well, that was progress.

“I – um, are you going to tell someone about that?” Phil asked gesturing to her wrist that she had cradled to her chest.

She smiled something bright and toothy that looked unnatural and unsettling on her face, “Of course, I will.”

Phil was not sure if she was lying to him or not but it sure as hell felt like it, “Are you lying to me?”

“No,” She drew out the words, an odd sort of glee in her eyes that chased the hazy pain away. “I would _never_.”

“I think you are.”

She laughed, not the guffawing crackling laughter that filled the room to the brim but a sort of startled giggle that sounded like music.

Phil liked it.

“You should laugh more often,” He told her, giggling along with her. “And smiled more. You know, when you’re not lying to me.”

 

The knock of Clint’s boot against her leg startled her, not that she would show it.

Natasha glared at him over her cup as he started back at her unapologetically. He signed quickly and discretely at her, asking her what was going on because…

Because it was very tense.

May was tense.

Fury was tense.

And neither Clint nor Natasha knew why.

She shrugged her shoulders. Clint rolled his eyes.

“So, He sighed loudly, the proverbial knife cutting the tension in the room in much the same way that a toothpick would cut a brick wall. “How was your first day?”

May didn’t respond, didn’t even look up from her plate. Natasha wondered if Clint picked up on the fact that she was just moving peas and noodles around on her place. She wondered if Fury did.

“You know, besides the fighting – which, by the way, _totally badass_ – and the not being in gym, or at lunch. You weren’t at lunch, were you? We couldn’t find you. Oh and-“

“What’s going on?” Natasha cut in, directing the question to Nick.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t lie to me, Fury.”

“It’s been a long day, Natasha, and not a very good one.”

“Oh, that means you’re in trouble,” Clint told May. “Or is it me? Because whatever it is that you think I did, I can give you a really good reason on why it’s totally Tony’s fault.”

“You’re not in trouble, Barton.”

“So, it _is_ you,” He shrugged his shoulders in an _oh well_ manner. “What did you do? I mean, other than the fighting.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Exactly,” Natasha pointed out, jabbing her fork in May’s direction. “That’s why he’s all _aargg_ Angry Fury. He gets really angry when you skip class.”

“But like, he gets over that really quickly,” Clint added, and then when Nick glared at him, “The first time, but you should totally learn your lesson because fighting? Pstt, big no! Fighting, bad! Right, Fury, right?”

“So, what are you, grounded?”

May shrugged.

“She’s not grounded,” Fury said through his teeth, sounding weirdly calm and unsettlingly frustrated all at the same time.

“Why?” Clint asked. “I told you, Tash, he _likes_ her more than us.”

“I’m waiting, Melinda,” Nick said, ignoring Barton for the time being. His eyes pierced into her but she didn’t look up from her plate.

“For what?” Clint and Natasha asked at the same time, eying each other before shouting, “JINX!”

Natasha rolled her eyes, “Damn it.”

“Melinda.”

It was a warning, one that was said in all the gruffness of Sergeant Fury’s ‘don’t-fuck-around-with-me’ attitude.

She slid her hands off the table – if it was a subconscious move he didn’t know – as she looked up at him in question, asking him what he was talking about without actually asking anything. He raised his eyebrow back in response, the ‘you-know-what-I’m-talking-about’ face as Clint had dubbed it.

Melinda snapped, “What?”

“Your arm.”

“My arm?”

“Her arm?”

“Let me see it,” Nick demanded, holding his hand out much the same way that Coulson had earlier. He didn’t look like he would be willing to wait there forever like Coulson had. Fury was not that type.

He was the type of man to take what he wanted when he wanted it. Soldiers and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were always on time crunches, they cut through niceties and boundaries to get what they wanted.

“Why?”

“You know why?”

“Did-“ She paused. “Did Phil talk to you?”

“Coulson?” Clint asked. “You talked to Coulson. Nat, you owe me ten bucks.”

“He didn’t have to speak to me because I’m not stupid and I have eyes,” Nick responded. May glared at him until he continued, “You’re right handed. Why are you eating with your left?”

“Because I am told that this is a free country,” She snapped back.

“Your arm,” He said once more, in a harder voice that barred no argument.

“No.”  It was said in a tone just as hard as Fury’s with a jerky head shake before she slid out of her chair, standing up. “No.”   

Nick grabbed her before she had a chance to move away from the table, wrapping his hand roughly around her arm before he realized what he was doing. The pained cry that escaped her mouth was the only thing that penetrated his hazy frustration enough for him to let go.

She swore under her breath in what Nick was sure was Mandarin before she dropped back into her seat. Her shoulders curled in as she clutched her injured arm to her chest.

She almost seemed to fold into herself.

Nick looked briefly over to Barton and Romanoff, seeing them both pale and wide-eyed before he sent them to take their plates and eat in their rooms.

“Is she alright?” Clint asked over Natasha’s _‘just come on, Clint.’_

“Barton,” Nick said tiredly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Just go, please.”

Nick didn’t say anything else until after Natasha pulled Clint out of the room. He sighed, “Is it broken?”

“I’ve had worse,” She stated, voice laced with pain that couldn’t be covered.

“That’s not what I asked,” Fury responded, trying to keep his voice calm and collected. “Is it broken?”

_I’ve had worse._

Didn’t that just _burn_ somewhere deep in his gut? It felt like his vital organs had been doused in hydrochloric acid. Sixteen  and had worse than what was probably an untreated broken arm.

“Is that from today or did it happen at the foster home?”

“Today.”

He couldn’t see her eyes through her hair but she was sitting up straighter in her chair now. Fury watched closely as she brought her uninjured hand into the mass of hair and pushed it away from her face. She was pale with shiny dark eyes glowering back at him but not a single fallen tear.

She was stronger than he thought.

“I set it.”

“May,” He breathed out. “Melinda, you don’t have to let things like this go untreated.”

“I’ve set it,” She repeated like that was all there was to it.

She said it like they were on a mission and a hospital trip for the trivial breaking of radius, or ulna, or carpals, whatever, would spell death, or danger, or the complete damnation of the cover they’d set up.

But, but they were not there.

They weren’t in Budapest, or Kiev, or Moscow, or _Bahrain,_ they were here and they were safe.

Safe enough anyways.

Fury wondered how many times she had to treat her own injuries and just how many times had that been the only option. He wondered just what kind of parent could sit back and let that be their kid’s life.

The decision to join S.H.I.E.L.D. or the C.I.A. was not always a result of free will. Very few people woke up in the morning and said they wanted to be a spy and actually became one.

It was not fun, it was not martinis and sharp suits, silly gadgets and fun adventures. The bad guys weren’t obvious, answers not easy, and there were times you couldn’t help but wonder if maybe you were the bad guys. It was not always a choice.

Nick got to choose. He sighed his name on the dotted line and it was his choice but some people were given the opportunity as a last resort.

Work with S.H.I.E.L.D. or be killed by S.H.I.E.L.D.

Very, very few were born into it. Dragged into it, yeah. Romanoff and Barton and their own series of bad events were evidence of that.

But May.

She was born into this and it was all she had ever known.

Nick wondered just how much damage her parents imposed on her before they met their end, leaving her so completely and utterly inapt to civilian life.

“We’re going to the hospital.”

“Okay.”


	9. Make Way

“Why is it,” the sing-song voice spoke from his doorway, “that every time I see little Melinda that she is more banged up than the last time?”

The sing-song voice dropped into something serious, “The cast and the split lip makes her the perfect image for a domestic violence poster and that’s not sitting well with me.”

“Because,” Fury said slowly, eying Maria’s pseudo-relaxed stance against the doorframe like he wouldn’t know that she used the same stance in interrogation. He knew that she wanted answers, that she felt protective over May. S.H.I.E.L.D. always protected their own. “We are idiots.”

“ _We?”_

“Yes, _we_. Us.”

“How so?” She asked, coming into the room and dropping all of her pretenses that she wasn’t fishing for answers.

“The fight in the hallway,” Nick sighed. “She broke her wrist and neither of us noticed.”

“How is that a ‘we’ thing?” Maria asked. “ _You_ didn’t notice.”

“Didn’t you think it was odd that Coulson strolled into the teachers’ lounge for ice?”

That got her.

Maria’s smirk disappeared and her eyes widened before she winced with the realization that she was duped, “He said that it was for drinks. Coulson _lied_ to me.”

“Yeah.”

“ _Coulson._ Lied. To. _Me?_ ” She said incredulous. “And I believed him?”

“Yep.”

“Are you sure?” She asked in disbelief.

“Yes, and thanks again for the Intel on where May was all day yesterday.”

“I thought that I’d give her some space,” Maria defended, putting her hands up to Nick’s annoyed glare. He did, after all, spend the entire day strolling around the building looking for his new charge. “And she was across the hall with Coulson, who you wanted her to talk to. How’d you find out about her wrist?”

“Coulson.”

“Coulson?” Maria repeated. “Coulson figured that out before two international spies? We’re losing out touch, Nick, and we’re not repeating this to anyone, ever.”

 

“I’m _not_ hacking,” She insisted. Her back pressed against the wall with her legs stretched out in front of her as her fingers flew over the computer keys. “Stop giving me that look, _Ward_. I know you are, I don’t even need to look up to know so, stop!”

“He is giving you the look,” Jemma confirmed, eyes still on her textbook.

“He so is,” Fitz agreed, also not looking up.

“So, what is it?” Ward asked. “Fish sticks on Thursday or pudding on Friday?”

“It’s _Facebook_ ,” She said, flipping her laptop hazardously in his direction so he could see the blue hue of the Facebook logo and her half-finished status.

“That’s Coulson’s Facebook.”

“What are you going to do, tell on me?” She asked sarcastically. “Who even _uses_ Facebook anymore _other_ than Coulson? He deserves this.”

“Hey guys,” Phil said as he sat his packed lunch down on the table next to Daisy’s outstretched feet.

“Hello Coulson,” They all droned. Neither Fitz nor Simmons bothered to take their eyes off the books in front of them. Daisy kept her eyes on Ward, daring him to tell Coulson that she very easily hacked into his Facebook again, raising an eyebrow at him that promised something embarrassing if he did.

“Hey Coulson, Daisy-“

“Shut up!” She exclaimed, laughing as she threw a grape at him. She swore when he caught it and ate it with a cocky smirk, “You’re not as smooth as you think you are.”

“Oh, I most definitely am.”

“I don’t even what to know what this is about,” Phil said, shaking his head. “And I don’t think I want to.”  

“Where were you yesterday?” Jemma asked, closing her anatomy textbook and placing it on the bench between her and Ward. “Surely, your dentist appointment didn’t take that long.”

“Oh, um, I got distracted,” Phil replied just as distracted now. His eyes roamed over the four corners of the cafeteria, over everything and anything in between them, never settling on anything for too long.

“Distracted enough to miss Taco Tuesday?” Daisy asked. “Thor and Clint had a taco eating contest.”

“That’s… interesting,” Coulson responded, nodding along but not sounding the slightest bit interested. His eyes still roamed the cafeteria, ping-ponging around the room at a dizzying pace and yet he still missed the strange look that Daisy gave him.

“Oh yeah,” She smiled. “It was totes cool. The tacos melted Clint’s mind and turned Thor into an actual god.”

“Very cool.”

“Yeah, and I’m pregnant with Ward’s baby,” She added.

“That’s great.”

“You’re not even listening to me,” She paused, rolling her eyes. “See, you didn’t even respond to that!”

“I’m sorry, what?’ Phil asked.

“Barton’s at his table,” She supplied. “If that’s who you’re looking-“

“Oh, there!”

“Wha-”

Coulson was gone before she even finished she one worded question, dashing across the cafeteria. He ignored the shouts to stop running from one of the lunch ladies and almost knocked the overfilled tray of overcooked hamburgers out of Logan’s hands.

“What’s gotten into him?”

“Who knows,” Ward said, eyes following the running teen. Coulson skidded to a stop in front of a girl with black hair, smiling wide. “That’s the new girl.”

Fitz supplied, “The Cavalry.”

“More like Coulson’s new pet project,” Daisy interjected. “Look how friendly he’s being.”

“Coulson is always friendly,” Simmons commented. “And don’t refer to people as projects, it’s dehumanizing. Her name is Melinda… I think.”

“Well, she is one of Fury’s kids so, you know, she’s got to be a little,” Fitz gestured to his head, spinning his finger around in a circle at is temple.

“She’s not crazy,” Simmons argued. “You don’t even know her, guys. Be nice.”

“What’s Coulson doing with her anyways?” Ward asked. “When would he have met her? She wasn’t in English yesterday.”

“She’s probably what distracted him,” Daisy suggested, watching as Coulson spoke with wild hand gestures and pointing back to their table. The new girl’s eyes followed his gesture over to them, causing them all to look away quickly.

“I get why she distracted him,” Fitz said and then when everybody looked at him. “What? She’s pretty!”

“Pretty scary, did you hear wha-“

“Guys,” Coulson cut in.

When they looked to the end of the table, Coulson was standing there with a proud smile on his face. The new girl was a step or two behind him, holding her textbooks close to her chest in a white knuckled grip that kind of implied that she didn’t really want to be there.

“This is May,” He stated proudly before pushing Daisy’s feet off the bench for he to sit down. “I asked her to eat lunch with us.”

“Hello May,” They droned in much the same way that they did to Coulson.

“The name is Daisy,” Daisy introduced since Coulson seemed to think grinning like an idiot was more important than introductions. “That’s Fitzsimmons.”

“I’m Fitz,” Fitz spoke up, looking up from his notebook. “That’s Simmons.”

“Jenna,” Simmons added with a smile. “And this is Ward.”

“We’ve met.”

“Have we?” May asked.

“You kicked my friend in the face,” Ward responded. His voice was neither angry nor calm, almost accusingly with a certain level of respect. Coulson sent Ward a warning glare, making a small gesture with his head to play nice so Ward added, “Pretty sweet moves you got.”

“Thanks.”

“Fitz, you’re quiet,” Phil noted.

“He’s upset,” Jemma supplied, pulling the seal off her fruit cup.

“I’m not upset,” He glared back at her, eyes softening with no real wrath in them. “Stark won’t let me help with his robot project in science club. Apparently my ‘ _Scottishness’_ is distracting.”

“Well-“

“He said I’d be a baby with a blowtorch and he wasn’t babysitter,” Fitz complained, bordering on outright whining. He dropped his voice into an American accent, “ _A Scottish baby with a blowtorch._ ”

“Tony is a jerk,” Jemma cut in, rubbing her hand across Fitz’s back in a comforting motion. “You know that. He only does it because he knows that he’ll get a reaction out of you.”

“Why would you want to help him anyways?” Daisy asked, tossing grapes in the air and catching them in her mouth, or more often than not bouncing them off her chin and letting them roll across the table.

“Oh, I don’t know,” He replied sarcastically. “Because it’s awesome.”

“Yeah, but Tony walked around with one eyebrow for a month because of one of his projects,” Phil interjected. “Do you want to be missing an eyebrow?”

“It’s so _cool_ though,” Fitz protected, his Scottish accent thicker. “If Stark would stop being such a jerk.”

Ward clapped his shoulder, “It’s never going to happen, man.”

“May, you can fight,” Fitz said. “Can you beat him up for me?”

“Sure,” She replied with a shrug. The entire table went quiet and all their eyes turned to her in some varying degree of question. “That was a joke.”

“Oh,” Phil said after a second. “Good. Yeah, uh, no beating up anyone until your arm is healed. That goes for all of you.”

“Yes, sir,” Ward said with a mock salute. “No beating anyone up until May’s arm is healed.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” He replied. “And that’s the wrong hand.”

“Yes, _Dad_ ,” Daisy rolled her eyes. “We get it. Violence, bad.”

“Good.”

“Oh, it’s _good_ now?”

“No, that’s – I was saying, we’re just not going to hit anyone anymore, okay?”

Daisy laughed, leaning over Coulson to tell May that Phil acted like everyone’s dad and it was best to just go along with it. He might even break out his ‘I’m-very-disappointed-in-you’ stare – _Oh, look! There it is._

That was how lunch continued, with Fitz scribbling and Tony bashing, and Coulson complaining that Daisy posted ‘ _I like Cap’s butt and I cannot lie’_  on his Facebook and his mom liked the post. Coulson tried his hardest to pull May into the conversation but not really having much to say or wanting to say much anyways, made it awkward.

It made her too much of the center of attention and that made her uncomfortable.

“Hey-“ was all that had the opportunity to be said before she was out of her seat. The hand that had landed on May’s shoulder was twisted behind the owner’s back as she slammed their face into the tabletop. “Jesus Christ.”

She let go immediately, backing up.

“Clint?” Phil asked. “Are you okay?”

“Huh? Yeah.” He picked himself up off the table, shaking out his arm before dabbing at his nose with his fingers to see if there was blood. He shrugged when there wasn’t, “All good.”

“Clint?” Natasha asked, running over to their table.

“I’m fine.”

May could feel, actually _feel_ each and every eye in the cafeteria on her like the light of a thousand suns, making her feel hot and dizzy. She couldn’t hear the silence that she knew befell the crowded room over the pounding of her heart in her ears and the feeling that she was going to vibrate out of her skin.

She crossed her arms across her middle, hunching her shoulders in and trying to make herself smaller, unnoticeable. It wasn’t working. It never fucking worked anymore.

“May, are you-“

She didn’t even notice that anyone had moved – she should have noticed, she should have – until Phil placed his hand gently on her own. She jumped and he let go, taking a step back.

Her eyes found his and there was no anger, no fear, no cautious curiosity that was always in people’s eyes when they looked at her nowadays – even Natasha was weary around her. There was just concern, just genuine open concern in kind blue eyes that she could get lost in if she ever had the time.

“May, I need you to let go,” Phil said softly, just loud enough to be heard over the roaring in her ears. Moving slowly and keeping his hands in her line of sight, like she was some sort of skittish animal.

She opened her mouth to ask what he was talking about. She didn’t know what she was holding onto. Even her grip on reality was shaky at the moment. She opened her mouth but nothing came out.

She wanted to laugh, to cry, to scream at people for touching her when she never gave them any damn permission. She wanted to yell about injustice and parents, and fear. She wanted to hit something, hit anything but not Phil Coulson standing in front of her. She wanted to strike out hard at something solid until her hands were bloody and broken, but none of that happened either.

“Your arm,” He explained when she didn’t move. “You’re hurting yourself, let go. Please?”

She followed the brief flicker of his eyes, still so concerned, down to where her black painted fingernails were digging into the flesh of her left arm. Little crescent half moons gave way to small bubbles of bright red blood to clot and dry right above her elbow. She wondered how much of her blood could be spilled before it was too much.

“I have to go,” May said suddenly, eyes darting around the room quickly. There were too many people and not enough exists.

There was no gun pressed against her hip or knife in her boots, there was no backup plan, or intel, or debriefing. There was no telling who was dangerous and who was not, and there were _not_ enough exits.

She came in unprepared, woefully so – they said to be prepared, expect the worse, always have a back-up plan and always have a knife – and she was so very unprepared and weaponless, and she couldn’t breathe.

“What?” Phil asked, slightly hysterical or was that her? “Why? It’s not – he’s fine. Clint, you’re fine.”

“I’m fine!” Someone – Clint said slightly too loud, slightly too defensive, off to her right.

She flinched.

“No one got hurt,” Coulson’s concerned voice told her. “It’s fine.”

Nothing was fine.

“I…” She trailed off, her eyes darting around the cafeteria before resting on Coulson’s soft eyes. “I need to call my mo- I need, I need to go. Sorry.”

With that, she darted off. People pushed themselves out of the way as she barreled out of the room. If she noticed than she didn’t show it but Phil _did_ notice and glared at every single one of them.

The room exploded into harsh whispers the moment she stepped out of view.

“That was actually a really cool move,” Clint commented, trying and failing to lighten the mood as he rotated his shoulder. “Archery practice is going to be a bitch though.”

“Why don’t you take a picture?” Natasha snapped to some onlookers, causing them to remove their gaze for fear of her wrath.

“I already did,” Tony said swaggering up to the table.

Bruce asked Clint, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” He demonstrated the fact by waving his arm over his head before he gathered up May’s textbooks and pushed his way past Tony on the way out of the room. “All fine. I’ll take her books to Fury.”

Natasha walked quietly after him.

Tony shrugged, made some comment about not wanting to catch Fitz’s Scottishness before walking back to his table. Bruce offered an eye roll and an apology for Tony being Tony before following him.

“What was up with her?” Ward asked.

“She’s –“ Coulson began but then paused because he didn’t even really know. “She’s been through a lot.”

“Are you sure that it’s safe to be around her?” Simmons asked quietly. “What if she hurts you? You’ve seen what she did to Garrett and he’s bigger than you.”

“It’s – she’s not going to hurt me!”

“How do you know?” Daisy asked. “It’s not like you know anything about her.”

He accused, “Neither do you.”

“Well, that was a pretty good demonstration she did there,” She responded. “I’m using that as evidence. Exhibit A: your girlfriend is dangerous.”

“She was just scared.”

“Most people don’t _attack_ people when they’re scared.”

“She didn’t attack him! He wasn’t hurt. She was just defending herself.”

“Just… be careful, Phil.”

 

“May, how was your day?”

“Oh thanks, Nick,” Clint said sarcastically as he tossed his bow down onto the kitchen table. “My day was just dandy, thanks for asking. You know, you were _wayyyyyy_ less obvious about like Tasha more.”

“Shut up, Barton,” Natasha snorted, her ballerina slippers in her hand. “You talk all the time. If no one asked, you would have told us anyways.”

“You… shut up,” Clint responded lamely.

“I know how your day went,” Nick said, eyeing him. “You’re grounded.”

“What? Why?” Clint whined and then his eyes widened a fraction in realization of what Nick must have been talking about. “I was only helping Tony.”

“You threw yourself off the roof.”

“You did?” Natasha asked, her eyes going wide before punching him in the shoulder. “And why wasn’t I there? I could have pushed you!”

“He was supposed to catch me,” Clint muttered, rubbing his arm.

“And he didn’t.”

“Booster malfunction,” Clint explained to Natasha’s gaze. “And it was fine, Nick! I knew that tree was there.”

“Still grounded.”

“I used to walk across tightropes without safety nets,” Clint whined. “That was nothing!”

“Grounded.”

“Fine,” Clint huffed. “Then I’ll just stay here and hang out with you all day, I guess. What are your feelings on the new Batman comics, Nick? Huh? You like ‘em? I like them. Do you? Huh? Nick?”

“Shut up,” Natasha said, punching him in the shoulder again. “Annoying him has literally never worked on getting you ungrounded. What’s he grounded from?”

Nick said after a moment, “TV.”

“But the new Law and Order!”

“You should have thought about that before you jumped off a building.”

“But-“

“No, Clint, shut up, I actually want to know,” Natasha stated, turning to May with a smile. “May, how was your first official day of classes? Did you like Sitwell?”

They were all dancing around the topic of her freak out at lunch and that she spent sixth period sitting under the desk in Mrs. Hand’s office waiting for her hands to stop shaking. Victoria had played soft jazz music and asked no questions to which May was thankful.

May shrugged her shoulders, cocking her head to the side with her lips pressed together. Indifference oppose to just ignoring the question which was an improvement from when they first met in Natasha’s mind.

“That’s not a yes,” Clint blurted out when Natasha grinned. “You didn’t win.”

“It’s not a no either,” Natasha pointed out.

“Stop making bets on May’s preferences,” Nick stated from where he was washing the dishes from yesterday’s dinner, May next to him with a towel ready to dry.

“Yes, Nick,” they said in union, rolling their eyes.

May smiled.

She didn’t quite know what to think of those two.

She’d never met anyone like them.

Natasha was suspicious of her, that much was obvious. She was strong and spoke like she had seen a few things; May thought that maybe she would too if she would speak more.

Natasha was in complete control of her body. May envied her control every time she found herself in in Hand’s office trying to even out her breathing or woke up in a cold sweat trying to slow her heart beat. She was a know-it-all who did actually know it all, and sneaky; May found that she liked that.

And Clint, Clint was funny and he carried a bow which was cool. He talked a lot, all of the time actually, but May kind of like that too because it made it easier to not think about the things that lurked in the back of her mind. He was smarter than he acted and he smiled too much, laughed too loud to be truly happy. And when he didn’t think anyone was looking, he was unbelievably sad.

Together, though, because that was what they were; together, always and forever.

Teammates, partners, or best friends, whatever they called themselves, they belonged that way. Clint made Natasha loosen up and she made his sadness less palpable. People should have people like that in their lives.

They were not bad people, she thought, they had seen a lot – experience clung to their skin like a second layer – far too many things for people so young, but then again so had she. So maybe it was fitting that they all ended up here, under the roof of a damaged secret agent, all of them just trying to make it to the next and maybe enjoying the current one a bit.

“Just wait, though,” Clint said, snapping her out of her thoughts. “You won’t like Sitwell. No one does. There’s something weird about him, and not just the way he teachers.”

“I like Sitwell,” Natasha stated.

“Yeah, and you’re weird, May’s not weird. Okay, well, we’re all a bit weird, but you’re the weirdest.”

“Nick does, too. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Nick replied, not even sparing them a glance as if they’re had their conversation a hundred times. It occurred to May for the first time that they probably have.

“Nick’s weird too.”

Nick did look at that, giving Clint a leering glare with a raised eyebrow.

Clint just grinned, “Isn’t that right, Agent Pleakly?”

May nearly dropped the glass she was holding. “Agent?”

“He’s trying to make a joke,” Natasha replied slowly, picking up on the tension that returned to May’s shoulder but not quite knowing why.

“Are you telling me you’ve never seen Lilo & Stitch?” Clint exclaimed. “Why? How? Did you live in a cave or something?”

“Sometimes,” May said, as she turned to place the now dry cup in the cupboard, so quietly that Nick barely heard it. But he didn’t miss the slight trimmer in her hand.

“Clint.”

“Yeah?”

“Get your bow off the table.”

Clint rolled his eyes and with a long suffering sigh grabbed the bow and clomped with bulky boots out of the room.

Natasha followed.

“Do they–”

“They don’t know,” Nick responded quickly, using the same soft tone that May had adopted. “I’m sure they have an idea but I never told them. I’d prefer that they didn’t know.”

“I read the file on Natalia Romanova, KGB, Red Room,” May said, her eyes down-casted. “Is that her?”

“Yes.”

May just nodded and put another cup in the cupboard. “And Clint?”

“C.I.A.”

“Oh.”

“How did you get ahold of Natasha’s file?” Nick asked accusingly, because he had Natasha’s file, and Clint’s, and May’s. They were all tucked away in the back of a hidden safe that he was sure they all knew about and had been unsuccessful at breaking into it.

“There are flaws in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s security system.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ve been to the Triskelion,” May stated looking at Nick with a small proud smile. “Nice vents, Clint would like it.”

He smiled back at her.

He had said she was clever, right?

 


	10. Reasons Not to Be an Idiot

The fighting may have gotten everybody else to give her a two foot berth in the hallways but it didn’t get John Garrett off her back.

She thought that it would.

Every high school movie that she’d ever seen said that all it took was one punch but as she predicted, the movies had misinformed her. If anything, it made her more of a target to the big stupid ape.

He bullied a lot of people. She was the only one that gave him a reason.

It didn’t bother her.

Well, it _did_ because she was a human and had pain receptors and feelings, but being shoved into a locker a couple times a day was hardly the worst thing that had ever happened to her. It _definitely_ was not something that she felt she needed to share.

The movies said that everything would eventually blow over. She just wondered what would happen until then.

Garrett, like all children who were never given limits, would pushed things too far. She knew that he would but she figured that it would be in a dark alley or a locker room – something very typical, high school movie.

She needed to watch fewer movies about high school because they were clearly inaccurate.

Well, not entirely.

She had been right about the locker room, though the bondage was unexpected.

The splitting headache was expected considering that the last thing she remembered was her head colliding with the corner of someone’s locker door. She had heard the thundering footsteps down the hall, expected the typical shove but not the strength that was behind it.

He practically threw her to the floor.

She stayed calm, forced herself to keep her breathing evenly and her eyes to stay hooded as she came to. Her feet were high enough off the ground that her toes just barely scrapped against the cold tiles beneath her.

The pain in her shoulder and the numbness of her hands suggested that she’d been hanging there for a while which was disconcerting, and _annoying_. They were reading Hamlet in English and she had been looking forward to it.

From what she could tell, there was only one other person in the room and that person was John Garrett. He appeared to be having a somewhat violent conversation on the phone just out of sight on her right.

She opened her eyes a bit more, not enough to be noticed by the casual observer but enough to see through her eyelashes. There was dry blood smeared across his hand and judging from the soreness radiating from the side of her face, it was hers.

He stripped her of her boots and socks, and there was a rip across her David Bowie t-shirt, which was also _annoying_ because she liked this shirt. She _borrowed_ this shirt.

May got distracted because her head really hurt and it was cold and, _really_ , Horatio had to deal with a lot less irritating shit than this in Hamlet. She would love to rather deal with ghost hallucinations than John Garrett.

She was distracted enough that she didn’t notice that Garrett ended his call with something like ‘ _fuck you, too, this is bullshit’_ or felt his stalker eyes on her until he was upon her.  

In fact, she had been so distracted that she didn’t notice Garrett at all until he tossed a bucket of water on her. She gasped at the sudden shock of it.

“Wakey-wakey.”

She glared at him but stayed quiet even as the water seeped into her torn shirt and dropped off her toes.

Men like Garrett loved to hear the sound of their own voices. They liked to prove how cleverer they were than you. If you stayed quiet long enough than they would fill in all the blanks, like how the hell he managed to get her here without someone seeing him.

“Oh now, sweetheart, show me that pretty smile,” He crooned, grabbing her by the jaw and forcing her to look up at him.

Her voice strained against the harsh grip, “What do you want?”

“There’s something about you,” He began, pushing her away despite her shoulders protest. The pipe above her head groaned. “You truly are fascinating. You fight well… for a girl.”

“Kicked your ass,” She responded, bracing herself for a punch that never came.

He just sneered, “Beginner’s luck.”

“Cut me down and we’ll give it another go.”

She made sure that her voice was even, sounding dull and bored even when she was anything but bored. It wasn’t quite fear but it was something close.

She was tired and her head was so fuzzy. She knew deep down in her bone that if they were to go for round two that he would win.

He’d win and men like Garrett never stopped at just winning. They didn’t stop until they destroyed everything in their path.

“How did you get me here?” She asked, observing the locker room. If she was not mistaken, this was the boy’s locker room right outside of the gym. People should have seen him.

“Oh, little Miss Melly May,” He breathed condescendingly before clicking his tongue at her like she was missing something right in front of her face. She felt her breathing hitch as he hissed, “Who would come to the aid of the Cavalry?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Don’t,” He snapped, slapping her hard across the face and splitting open her lip once more, “Interrupt me. Darling.”

“Dually noted.”

Another slap. She smiled as blood coated her teeth.

“Who would care about _you_?”

“Who indeed,” She muttered to herself.

He slapped her once more as if to emphasize her unimportance and then laughed. If May didn’t already think that he was crazy, she was sure of it now.

She looked up past her hands, white from lack of circulation and rope strained red from her uncasted wrist to the pipe above. It wasn’t steady, strong enough to hold her up but it groaned and protested when he pushed her. Now, if –

“My mother can hit harder than that,” She spat blood at his feet, before flashing him a smile that was all teeth. “In fact, she _has_. You can do better than that, come on.”

“Your mom’s dead.”

“Really saying something then,” She smiled brighter, blood covering teeth.

He did do better than before, his closed fist cracking against her jaw with all the metaphorical tweeting birds and stars. It made her feel hazy.

The pipe whined in protest but it only whined.

“Is – is that supposed to hurt?”

He laughed, all smiles and stupid turtlenecks, the promise of pain playing across his lips. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

Garret got close enough that she managed to get a kick or two in before he punched her in the stomach. He growled, grabbing her by the hair, “Now listen here, you little bitch. You-“

“Garrett!”

They both paused, his hand in her hair and blood dribbling down her chin.

“John,” The voice called breathlessly through the door, followed by three quick knocks. “I, uh, are you in there?”

“Coulson, go away,” He replied, glaring at May with a look that promised bodily harm if she spoke. Well, it promised _more_ bodily harm.

“John, I need to talk to you.”

“I’m busy, Phil.”

“Doing what?”

“Masturbating.”

“…Okay, ew.”

May raised an eyebrow at Garrett and he just shrugged. A smile crept its way across her face and she opened her mouth to speak, only to have Garrett clamp his clammy hand over it, “Shut up.”

“Mmmmmmtmu.”

“What?” He asked, removing his hand.

“Behind you,” She smiled, showing him that that pretty smile that he had wanted so badly to see. Garrett turned around slowly to find a wide-eyed Coulson in the doorway looking very distressed.

His hair was tasseled and his shirt was more untucked than tucked. One of his sweater sleeves were pushed up while the other one wasn’t. He looked like a grade-A geek. May found it to be hilarious.

“What the hell?”

She smiled at him from over Garrett’s shoulders, that same fake smile that he said he liked, though the blood probably didn’t make it very appealing.

She smiled anyways.

“Like seriously, what the actual hell?” He let the door slam shut behind him as he pocketed the big ring of keys. Garrett, like the stupid child that he was, decided that if he blocked her form Phil’s view than he would just forget that she was there.

It was _almost_ funny.

“Fancy meeting you here,” May drawled. Garrett took another step towards her, still facing Coulson. It was a dumb mistake, really.

“Shut it, sweetheart,” He hissed.

“What’s going on?”

“Just hanging,” She responded before swinging her legs up and around Garrett’s neck, squeezing tight. “Don’t call me sweetheart.”

“Melinda!” Phil called over Garrett’s wheezing and his angry clawing at her thighs. The pipe bowed in and whine with the movement, and she could feel blood wet her wrist every time he tried to pull away.

“Stop it!” Phil shouted, pushing them apart. Garret stumbled away and finally, _finally_ , the pipe gave out. May fell to the floor lacking any sort of grace and instantly became soaked with water because _yeah_ , there it was a water pipe that she just broke.

May got to her feet slowly and then stumbled out of the water, feeling a headrush. Phil seemed to have avoided the water all together.

She didn’t get far enough before Garrett was upon her, big meaty hands gripping her tattered wet t-shirt and lifting her off the ground. He shoved her back hard into the lockers.

“You little-“

“Get off her, Garrett!” Phil demanded angrily, stepping between the two of them and shoving Garrett back. May thought that it was a stupid, reckless thing to do even as she stumbled to remain on her feet.

Garrett was big, bigger than Phil and stronger than him. He was reckless, and meticulous, and cruel. It was like putting yourself in the path of a raging bull; it would be stupid to expect to walk away without any bruises, especially if you turned your back on them like an idiot.

“Go,” Coulson commanded sounding so much like a soldier, like a captain. His voice was hard and ice, and it froze May to the core. Garrett, too. “Stand over there, John.”

He pointed to the far side of the room, as far from May as physically possible without actually leaving the room altogether.

“Now.”

Garrett listened, trudging in the rising puddle of water over to the corner that Coulson has pointed to with drooping shoulders and a kicked puppy expression. She was confused.

There was no reason why Garret should listen to Coulson. He didn’t listen to the teachers in the hallway. He didn’t even bat an eye when he disobeyed Nick Fury.

Phil Coulson in his stupid sweater should not be able to tell him what to do.

“Are you okay?” Phil asked her, turning his back to Garrett which was a good way to get dead. Coulson didn’t seem to comprehend that you couldn’t turn your back on a bull.

Seriously, he was either stupid or he had a death wish.

She needed to talk to him about that.

“May?” He said softly. “Are you okay?”

 _‘I’m okay,’_  She wanted to say

 _‘I’m not okay,’_ She wanted to say.

“I had it under control,” She said instead. Her voice sounded angry even to her own ears, even if she didn’t feel anything but her heart beating painfully against her ribcage, and tired. She felt so tired.

She had apparently stumbled into a different universe where people like John Garrett listened to people like Phil Coulson, but really that was the least of her problems today.

“That’s not control,” Coulson stated, disbelief coating his voice as he pointed to the busted pipe and the water that seemed to never let up. Phil’s shoes were wet and she was wet, soaked, and looked so cold.

“That’s my control,” She replied venomously.

She was Melinda May and like her mother before her, she was never out of her depth. She was never without a plan, never without control. Even when she was out of control and tired up, and _losing_ , she was in control.

You lose control and people die.

She _was_ in control with no extraction plan, no back up. It was the only option so it was her control.

_‘Who would come to the aid of the Cavalry?’_

_‘Why would anyone care about you?’_

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t,” He replied, seemingly just as grateful for the change of conversation as she was. “This is the fourth place I checked.”

 

_“Son of Coul,” Thor greeted, jubilantly, as he passed Coulson in the hallway, flashing him a bright smile._

_“Hey Thor,” Phil returned the greeting, grabbing his calculous book from his locker and slamming it shut before quickening his step to join Thor in the trek to their class. “I heard you’re going to be in Much Ado, congratulations!”_

_“Aye, thank you, I will be Benedick,” he said sheepishly ducking his head before getting serious. “I hope your friend is well.”_

_“What?”_

_“Miss May,” Thor identified._

_“What about her?” Phil asked, stopping in the middle of the hallway, almost being trampled by a bunch of freshman. It could really be anything and none of that was good. “Was it a panic attack?”_

_“No,” Thor answered warmly, his deep accent that was usually so calming did nothing to ease Coulson’s uneasiness. “She fell, hit her head.”_

_“Is she okay?” Coulson asked, and then felt like a moron because obviously Thor didn’t know anything. He’d asked Coulson to see if he knew, after all. “You didn’t help her?”_

_And Jesus, from the hurt look that fluttered across Thor’s features, he sounded judgment and accusing. This was Thor, after all, he’d drink the ocean if you asked him to._

_“Aye, John Garrett helped her,” Thor told him. “I offered my service but he – what is it?”_

_What was it indeed because no one paled that quickly if they weren’t planning on passing out and breaking their nose against the floor._

_“Garrett helped her?” Coulson asked because he had to have heard that wrong. Phil had known Garrett for a long time now and that man had never helped anyone before in his life, even if he’d benefit from it._

_“Aye,” he confirmed before he started walking again. “I’m sure she is well. We’re going to be late.”_

_“I’m, uh – I’ve forgotten my book,” Coulson lied terribly because Thor looked pointedly down at the calc. book in his hand. “And by that I mean, I… I just need to go… talk to someone. Yep, that, gotta do that.”_

_“What ails you, my friend?” Thor asked concerned, cocking his head to the side._

_“I’m – it’s nothing,” Coulson answered even if he knew Thor wouldn’t believe him, even if he didn’t believe it. Something was wrong, he could taste it. “I’ll just – bye.”_

Phil didn’t know he had paused until May yanked her arm out of his hand. He wasn’t even aware of when he had grabbed her arm in the first place.

All he really knew for sure was that Thor was the best. Truly, he was a god among men.

“Here,” Phil said quickly, calmly. “Let me help you.”

She was gnawing at the rope with her teeth, and it didn’t look like it was doing a damn thing, “You look stupid, give it here.”

She reluctantly held out her hands for Phil to remove the bloody rope. He did so with care, caressing her wrist until she pulled it away.

“I need you to tell me if you are injured,” He said seriously because May walked around with a broken arm for half a day because she didn’t find it very important to do something about. Her wrist was ruffed up, rubbed raw but the cast seemed to have held up.

He tapped his fingers against it, “Thank god for fiberglass casts. Am I right?”

“I’m fine,” May replied because physically she was. Mentally, she was shaken up more than she should have been but he hadn’t asked.

“You look like hell,” Phil commented. Blood was smeared across her face, she was soaking wet, and disheveled. Her shirt, her socks were soaked, and she was bleeding. “Where are your shoes?”

She shrugged.

“Where are her shoes?” He asked as he rounded on Garrett, who had at that point seemed content to brood in the corner forgotten. He gestured with his head where he’d tossed them on top of the lockers.

“Speaking of,” Phil said, voice going dark and his shoulders going stiff. He transferred from adorable geek from Administrations to a soldier, leader, commandeer. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

He marched over to Garrett glared up at him in a way that felt like he was staring down at him.

 _‘The disapproving dad look,’_ May thought. _‘Times ten.’_

“We don’t do this,” He pointed around the room jerkily, anger in every moment and every word. “Whatever kind of school initiation thing, it stops. Now.”

“You,” He jabbed him in the chest with every word spoken. “You. Do. Not. Do. This. To anyone. Ever.”

“I-“

“No, shut up,” He snapped, shoving Garrett back into the wall.

May should leave. She should go find a shirt but from what she had seen, people avoid Garrett like one would avoid a plague victim on fire. No one had ever, _ever_ talked to him like this so someone had to stick around so Phil didn’t get himself killed.

“I know you don’t like her,” He continued. “But that does not make this okay. This, what you did to her. That is assault, John. It is evil and if you do it again I’ll-“

“I know,” He snorted. One could say a lot about Garrett, May thought, he was cocky to the point that it was stupid. “You’ll tell Fury.”

“No,” Phil told him, sounding far too calm for the anger that was clearly coursing through his every move. “I will put a bullet into you. Do you understand me?”

“You got that?” He demanded, pushing Garrett again.

“Yes.”

“Now get out of my sight.”

Garrett left without a fight, avoided looking at May altogether which was just fine with her.

Phil’s words settled heavy in her stomach. It made her feel relieved, and angry, and sick. There was no hesitation there, no trimmer in his voice when he made his threat. He meant his words.

“Melinda, let’s get you cloth-“ Phil said, turning back to her. “Oh, okay. You can apparently break into lockers, good to know.”

“The combination was on the wall,” She commented absentmindedly, pulling out a shirt with a bulls-eye target on the front of it.

“Of course, it was,” Coulson sighed. “That’s Clint’s.”

She shrugged. It didn’t matter to her.

“Let’s get out of here,” Coulson said, grabbing May’s shoes.” “Fitzsimmons’ lab has a couch. Then I’ll go get Fury.”

“No.”

“May,” He sighed, punching the bridge of his nose.

“I’m not telling him or anybody.”

“If you’re embarrassed-“

“I’m not.”

“May, you need-“

“No, I don’t,” She protested. “Promise me. Promise me that you won’t tell.”

“May-“

“Promise me,” She repeated. “It is important that you promised me.”

“Okay,” He said, giving up. There was no point in arguing with her. He would not be able to deny her anyways, not when she was asking him of only this.

“What happened here?”

May rolled her eyes as she pulled sweatpants out of Clint’s locker.

Phil turned slowly towards the door where janitor, Mike Peterson, was standing with a mop staring at him for answers. Phil looked around the room, at the broken pipe and the puddle of water up to his ankles.

“Uh, nothing?” he tried. May actually snorted at that, sending an incredulous look his way.

“Try again,” Mike suggested. May for her part slammed the locker shut, before turning to look at Mike with a bright sunny smile on her face.

“We were passing by when we saw the water,” she told him. “We found the cause.”

“Is that so?” He asked eyeing her, unimpressed. “And what class are you currently not in.”

“Gym,” May responded confidently.

“Is that what happened to your face?” he asked.

The smile, fake as it was, disappeared off her face almost immediately. “Yes.”

“There was an accident,” Phil jumped. “Yeah, I am, uh, I’m taking May to the nurse.”

“And if I asked the gym teacher?”

“He will confirm it,” May replied sharply over Phil’s intelligent response of ‘uhhh.’

“Uh, Mr. Peterson,” Phil jumped walking up to the unimpressed janitor and talking low. “I, um, I can’t explain this, like at all, but it…we didn’t do all of this. Well, not really.”

Mike raised an eyebrow then looked over at May. Phil imaged that she rolled her eyes at him.

“Is she alright?” he asked, voice low enough that May couldn’t hear it over the water.

“Yes,” Phil confirmed.

“Then get out of here before someone sees you.”

“Oh my god, thank you so much,” Phil grinned gesturing to May to follow him. “Oh, um, you should probably take these.”

He pulled the key ring out of his pocket, sheepishly added, “Don’t ask.”

Coulson should probably feel bad about stealing the keys off a janitor, but given what he needed them for he didn’t really care.

“Nah,” Mike responded, tossing them back. “I’ll tell Henry he lost them. Take the elevator, she looks like she’s going to collapse.”

And she did so Phil gathered May and guided her to the elevator.

When he did finally get her to Fitzsimmons lab, he turned around after unlocking the door to find that she wasn’t even there.

He followed the puddles of water up the hall to a cracked door.

He knocked.

 


	11. Buddies

“Bruce?” Coulson called, listening to the noise of approaching footsteps on the other side of the door.

“Coulson,” He greeted, coming to the door. He only opened it enough to fit his head out. “Lose something?”

“Is Melinda in there?” He asked tiredly.

“What happened to her?”

“She was hurt.”

“Well that was insightful, Phil,” Bruce said flatly, his head darting back into the room before reappearing again.

“Can I come in?”

Bruce opened the door wider and took a step back to let him in.

Phil liked Bruce’s lab.

Bruce’s lab was cozy the way others were sterile and cold, white colored walls coated in posters of classic art and old soft rock bands. There was a familiar warm smell of Indian spices from the lunch that he kept in the clearly labeled ‘food’ refrigerator.

Plus, Bruce had the softest rolling chairs ever.

It felt very…Bruce. And Bruce was comfortable, he was warm and he was safe. Phil wasn’t all that surprised that May ended up in here.

May was standing in the middle of the room, clothes still damp on the counter by some contraption. Her back was to Phil but that did nothing to hide her shivering.

“Melinda,” Phil said softly as he came up beside her. “You need to change your clothes.”

“Okay,” she replied, pulling her gaze from the faded Van Gogh on the wall to him, accepting the clothes from his hands.

“I’ll just – oh, there you go,” Phil stumbled over his words because she just tossed her top on the ground and he was now staring at a shirtless May. He should probably look away but… was that scar caused by a _bullet_? And that looked like she had been stabbed, in the shoulder once and – god, he couldn’t be gawking at her!

He was looking away _now._

He looked over to Bruce because what was he supposed to do?

And Bruce was _laughing_ at him!

“What exactly was that shirt covering up in the first place?” Bruce asked. “Come on, Coulson. Tony had orange juice in his lab.”

“Did – did you get stabbed in the shoulder?” He blurted out instead of just leaving with Bruce like he planned on. “No, wait, that was rude to ask. I should never–”

“Yes,” she answered shortly.

“Coulson, come on,” Bruce called from the doorway.

And yeah, yessity, yes, yes, yes. They should leave.

They should definitely leave because May was changing her clothes and clearly not in the right mind to tell him to fuck off. It was just poor manners to be staring at apparently old knife wounds and very new bruises across her, because yeah, that looked like it hurt and his mother taught him better than that.

“Yes, orange juice!”

Oh god, he was blushing.

 _‘Phil, get a grip,’_ he thought following Bruce’s shaking shoulders out the door.

Bruce was great.

Bruce was kind and caring and he was always there to listen. He occasionally…lost his shit, but other than that, a totally freaking great human being.

He was also an asshole who would not stop laughing.

“Shut up,” Phil muttered, trying to will the red from his face. “How do you even know her?”

“You mean other than being friends with Natasha and Clint, and _you_?” He asked, stopping in front of the door to Tony’s lab. “And listening to you go on, and on, and on–”

“I do not go on, and on, and on,” Phil muttered.

“You do,” He informed. “And we have art together anyways. J.A.R.V.I.S.?”

“Doctor Banner,” The computerized voice greeted. “Mister Coulson.”

“Just Bruce, Jarv,” Bruce commented as the pressure lock released and the door slide open.

“Oh, Tony got J.A.R.V.I.S. back up,” Phil noted smiling.

Wasn’t it like a week ago that someone (Fitz) short circuited the wiring in the school that had the Tony and Bruce pouring over notebooks, and Starkpads, and J.A.R.V.I.S. saying the wrong…cranberry? (Which Coulson thought was freaking hilarious, but he kept that to himself because J.A.R.V.I.S. might lock him out next time Tony refused to leave).

“Yeah, like two weeks ago.”

“Sixteen days,” J.A.R.V.I.S. corrected.

“Sixteen days?”

“You’ve been busy with your new girlfriend,” Bruce replied, walking to the mini fridge in the corner. “Where’s Tony?”

“Class, I believe,” J.A.R.V.I.S. supplied.

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“You going to tell me what happened to her?” Bruce asked, tossing a juice box at him. “And she kind of is.”

“I told you–”

“You stated, a vague and obvious fact, you didn’t tell me what happened,” Bruce pointed out playful joking aside, replaced with a voice coated in frustration. The same frustration that Phil was feeling because Melinda May should not look like that, ever.

Bruce got it.

May had been through a lot and shouldn’t go through more.

“So, tell me what happened because that… that looks bad,” He said. “And I’m very, very angry about it.”

“I – she told me not to tell anyone.”

“I don’t care,” Bruce responded. “Was it Garrett? Daniels?”

“Bruce,” Phil pleaded. “I promised her. I can’t.”

“What’s stopping this from happening again?”

“Me,” He said, voice hard and jaw set because if he had to be the thing between Melinda and Garrett then so be it. That was not happening again, as long as he was by her side.

“And how are you going to do that?”

“Any way that I can.”

And he meant it with all that he had.

“I’m going to take this to her,” He said, holding up the juice box. He’d literally rather jump out a window if it got him away from this conversation.

May was sitting in one of Bruce’s rolling chairs when they got back. Her t-shirt had been discarded in the trash and her jeans folded on the counter. Clint’s sweatpants folded down over her bare feet because May was short, like really short.

Phil was hit in the chest with the realization of just how short May really was. Well shorter than Clint anyways and him, probably not Natasha, who had never pissed off Garrett. She was so small and Garrett was the size of a fucking house.

He was every bully that picked on Steve Rogers, he realized.

If he had to be Bucky Barnes than he would be, this wasn’t happening again. Even if May was probably stronger than pre-serum Steve and would probably kick his ass if she ever heard him say that.

“Here,” He said pulling off his sweater and holding it out to her. “You’re going to shiver out of your skin. Stop looking at me like that.”

Seriously, the raised eyebrow through a curtain of wavy hair was adorable, but also made him feel like an idiot standing there in his wrinkled button up.

She reached out slowly and took the sweater from his grip before sliding it over her head.

“Are you sure that you’re not hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding,” He pointed out.

“Here,” Bruce said sitting the first aid kit on the table between Phil and May. She reached out for it, grabbing wet wipes.

“Let me help,” Phil said, taking it from her hand and ripping open the package.

“Fitzsimmons got that thing that they were talking about at lunch to work,” Phil commented as he wiped away the blood on her forehead. “Well, in theory anyways, they hadn’t tested it yet. They want to shoot Tony with it but Pepper says no. Fury agreed though…which isn’t really all that surprising now that I think about it.”

“Sounds like him,” She said softly.

“Tony’s words were something along the lines of ‘come and fucking get me, dweebs.”

“And that sounds like him,” Bruce muttered, shaking his head.

“So, uh,” Phil struggled to find something to say.

“How do you know Garrett,” She cut in, once the bandage was secure over the gash on her forehead.

“Our dads were stationed at the same place,” Phil responded. Bruce made a noise of contempt and gave Coulson a ‘so I _was_ right’ look.

Phil rolled his eyes back.

“Was he always such a–”

“Psychopath?” Coulson guessed.

“Dick,” May finished, using a wipe to get the blood from her chin as he wrapped gauze around her wrist.

“Yeah,” He laughed. “Yeah, always an asshole; I’m working on changing that.”

“Lost cause,” Bruce muttered and May agreed.

Garrett wasn’t mean because he could be or be had to be – it wasn’t some stupid ‘I’ve got a rep to protect’ BS from Grease 2 – he was mean because he just was.

Deep down, past the mean and cruel exterior was a meaner and crueler core.

“Why did he listen to you?” She asked because that didn’t make sense and the more she thought about it the less it did.

“He respects me?” Phil guessed, tossing the bloody wipes in the trash. He didn’t really understand it either. “He knows my dad, maybe it’s that. There you go, good as new.”

“I look like I’m five,” she commented and well, she did.

Bruce snorted at that.

She did look like she was five. His sweater made it worse because it fell over her hands and slipped off her shoulder.

“You want to see if Natasha has clothes in her locker?” He asked. “Or Simmons, if you want to look like you go to prep school. Then we can go get lunch or something.”

“Okay,” She said after a thought and then got her shoes.

“So smooth,” Bruce muttered as he went back to centrifuging cuvettes.

“What are you talking about?” Coulson whispered, pulling his phone out.

“Have fun on your date, Phil.”

“What? It’s not a date!”

“Let’s get dressed and go get food,” Bruce paraphrased, watching as May tied her laces. “Sounds a lot like a date to me.”

“It’s not a date,” Phil repeated. “It’s not, shut up. I wouldn’t take her to Taco Bell on a date.”

“Oh, so you have thought about taking her on a date.”

“Shut up!” Phil exclaimed with an incredulous laugh. “You’ve been hanging out with Tony for too long.”

“Phil,” Melinda spoke up way closer than he remembered her being.

“I’ve texted Natasha, let’s go.”

“Have fun,” Bruce called after them, the _‘on your date’_ loud and clear, as Coulson guided May out the door.

“I hate you, Bruce,” Phil called back, causing Bruce to laugh.

They took the stairs after briefly arguing that ended with May telling him that she would kick his ass if he didn’t get up those stairs.

“Nat’s at her locker,” Phil commented, as they got to the top of the stairs. “Be warned, she’s going to ask a lot of questions.”

“About what?” May asked, distracted by glaring at anyone who happened to cross their path.

“Have you seen your face?” Coulson responded. “Or you know, your clothes or your hair, but mainly your face.”

She really did look awful.

Her lip was clotted with blood and swollen. The bruise across her temple, sticking out from under the bandage, looked livid and painfully spread across her forehead like a spider web, reaching as far down as the bruise across her jaw.

She shrugged, what was she going to do about it?

“You promised,” She reminded him quietly.

“I know,” He replied. “I’m regretting it every second.”

She snorted at that and a small smile tugged at her lips.

“I’m serious; Nat might try to torture it out of me.”

That got an amused huff as they rounded the corner to the hallway with Natasha’s locker. She was there, leaning against her locker talking with Clint, who was slouched against the floor.

“I’m just saying,” Clint spoke as they got closer. “It would be awesome, Nat.”

“Until, you got shot in the head,” Natasha replied unimpressed.

“It’d be worth it.”

“What the hell happened?” She questioned harshly when May caught her eye.

“Huh?” Clint asked confused before following Natasha’s gaze. “Jesus Christ, you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, you look like shit,” Natasha retorted, crossing her arms. “What happened?”

“I fell,” May replied absentmindedly like she didn’t care for the conversation, which given that Coulson had asked her that very question a million times already she probably didn’t.

“Off what?” Clint asked, getting to his feet. “A cliff?”

“Coulson?” Natasha asked, clearly wanting an explanation. “Explain.”

He could see, like literally see that she was gearing up for a fight for information. Natasha didn’t do well with not knowing and neither did the people withholding information from her.

“Well, that’s true,” He responded, trying to convey with her eyes that he couldn’t tell her but he wanted to and he was very, very sorry. “She _did_ fall.”

“You’re not going to tell me who I have to beat up,” She observed. “Because I know that it’s not gravity.”

“No,” May responded.

“Not even what happened to your clothes?”

“No.”

“Well,” Clint breathed out, turning his hawk-like eyes onto May. “Is everything still functioning? Nothing injur – hey! Are those my sweatpants? And that’s my shirt, isn’t it?”

“Probably,” May replied.

“It is,” Coulson answered.

“Why are your pants wet?” Clint asked Coulson.

“I stepped in a puddle.”

“A really big one,” Clint observed. “Is this before or after May fell off a cliff?”

“Do you have clothes or not?” Coulson asked tiredly. “We all still do have class to attend.”

“I’ve got leggings in my ballet bag,” Natasha replied reaching into her locker and pulling out the pants.

“Thanks,” May replied, taking the pants and walking to the bathroom at the end of the hall.

Natasha and Clint waited a beat after May disappeared behind the door before rounding on Coulson. “What the hell?”

“Coulson,” Nat said. “Tell me who’s ass to kick or it might be yours.”

“I can’t.”

“Yeah, you can,” Clint responded, crossing his arms. “You’re choosing not to.”

“Trust me, I’d tell you if I could,” Phil muttered. 

“And why can’t you?” Natasha asked.

“I promised her.”

“Damn,” They said in unison because both Natasha and Clint got the value of trust. They couldn’t ask him to break it.

“Are you, at least, going to tell Fury?’ Clint asked weakly.

The same anger and weariness that was present in Bruce’s eyes were in theirs. The ‘what’s stopping this or worse from happening again’ hung in the air like an ax. They’re all protectors; they would all jump into a fight just to save someone else and not being able to do so was frustrating.

May could defend herself, they all knew that, but she didn’t have to.

“No,” sounded from behind him, causing them all to jump, even Natasha.

“Damn sneaky,” Clint muttered rounding around on May. She tossed his sweatpants and his t-shirt at him. Dressed in Phil’s sweater and Natasha’s yoga pants, May looked less like a sleepy child but not by much.

 Phil was honestly just happy that she kept his sweater so that she would be warm.

“What’s your plan?” Natasha asked, not bothering to fight May on telling Fury. She knew when she was beat.

“We’re going to get lunch,” Phil responded oddly cheerful.

“Cool, we’re going,” Natasha shot back, daring Coulson to argue.

“What are you doing out here?” Sitwell spoke up, powerwalking down the hall to the four of them.

“Great,” Clint muttered to himself.

“Going to the bathroom, Mr. Sitwell, wanna join?” Natasha spoke up.

“And the rest of you?”

“I needed a tampon,” She responded, not missing a beat. She even pulled a tampon from god knows where. “Thanks May.”

“And you two?” He asked, his patience very clearly reaching its end much quicker than it usually did.  

“We were going to get it on in the disable’s stall,” Clint answered and then winked at the glare that Natasha sent him because yeah, _unhelpful._ “And by that, I mean we were going to…recite a prayer. Yeah, to the math circus gods because we, um, have a calc. test tomorrow, as teenagers do.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, honest, I learned this in the circus.”

“Lying,” He stated, glaring at the archer.

“Yeah, you’re right, we were going to bone.”

“Clint, shut up,” Phil snapped, his face red from nose to ears. “We were… uh–”

“Do you have anything to say for yourself, young lady?” He asked May, cutting off Coulson’s stuttered response.

“No,” She replied from behind a mop of hair, keeping it in her face to hide the worse of the bruising.

Natasha said that she liked Sitwell, Clint said he was weird.

She got that, kind of.

His teaching methods left something to be desire. They were dull and pointless, but Biology wasn’t really her interest, or his, she suspected. The boring videos on amino acids that he played, when he wasn’t out gallivanting them across campus, gave her a lot of time to observe the bald man – he had worn that suit four times in the past two weeks.

He had long since mastered the art of texting under the table; he didn’t even have to look. He was too much of a rule follower and freaked out if you didn’t follow everything to a T. It resulted in a lot of time wasting lectures about wasting time.

“No?” He asked incredulous.

Oh yeah, he threw a fit whenever you didn’t answer his stupid questions.

“No.”

Clint whistled in a way that sounded a bit like a falling missile ready to fuck something up, kinda like how she just fucked up their chances of getting away from the man without some sort of punishment.

“Didn’t your parents ever teach you some manners?” Sitwell asked. Rhetorical, of course, but that didn’t stop Clint from replying.

“My parents are dead,” He replied abruptly like he had the words poised on the tip of his tongue, ready to trip up the first person who asked that very question.

Sitwell faltered in both step and voice because he was probably at least a halfway decent guy and halfway guys sometimes regretted things.

“Mine too,” Natasha added, her smile mischievous but her eyes held a sadness matching the same one in Clint’s eyes. The sadness of what might have been that was in the eyes of all those who had lost someone and was remind of that.

Sitwell’s eyes slid to May as regret and guilt rippled over his face like he just _knew_. He probably did.

She thought that she should chime in anyways, holding her ‘Dead Parents’ membership card proudly in the air and say something like ‘presumed dead KIA, giant fires had a way of killing people, who knew?’

She said nothing.

“That’s…that’s enough,” He faltered again because Clint was laughing at something Natasha whispered to him.

“Mr. Sitwell,” Phil tried because he was in no mood to be in trouble and he really wanted tacos.

“No, Fury’s office,” Sitwell snapped.

 _‘Oh, he’s even pointed,’_ May thought tiredly. ‘ _How cute.’_

She was bored of this, they were getting tacos, right?

She was hungry and wanted a taco.

“Sitwell, please,” Coulson tried again. May doesn’t get why he even tried or why Jasper Sitwell felt the need to complain about literally everything. All she wanted to do was sit down and have tacos, and for him to just _shut up._

Her head hurt, it really hurt, and her arms. And Sitwell just talked so much. They’re quieter now, which was great because–

“Excuse me!”

_‘Oh.’_

She said that out loud and Sitwell looked outraged. He sounded outraged as well.

It’d be funny if she actually cared.

It was more annoying than when he tried to sound indignant and superior.

“She’s didn’t–”

“Coulson, don’t even try,” Clint cut in. “Fury’s?”

“Probs,” Natasha agreed.

“Go!” Sitwell snapped, pointing down the hall like every cartoon teacher ever in the history of Sunday morning cartoons.

They all rolled their eyes before walking away from the shouty teacher.

“That went well,” Clint muttered.

“You better figure out what you’re going to tell Fury,” Natasha told May, who just hummed in response. She didn’t really care about what Nick Fury wanted, she wanted tacos.

“May, you still okay?” Phil asked her, trying not to notice how Clint and Natasha sped up so they could have a bit of privacy.

“I want tacos,” She answered.

Phil huffed a laugh, “Yeah, me too. After Fury chews us out we’ll go get lunch.”

“Okay.”

“What did you do?” Maria asked, not looking up from the paperback she was reading.

“Just being good Samaritans,” Clint replied, not missing a beat.

“Uh-huh,” Maria hummed. “Go on in.”

Nick was on the phone when Clint threw the door open. Very angry Italian vowels met them that had him pacing the small width of the room, which quickly switched over to a lunch order. And really that only made him look more suspicious to May.

“What did you do?” He asked with a sigh of exasperation.

“Came across, Sitwell.”

“All of you?” He observed, eyes moving from Clint’s forced laidback smile, to Natasha’s furrowed brow, to Coulson’s strategic stance in front of May.

“Well, we were trying to get an orgy going but he busted all of our fun,” Clint replied. “Which sucks, I brought the lube.”

“Is there a particular reason you keep drawing my attention to you?” Nick asked.

“Uh, no?”

“Sit down,” Nick responded, going back to his desk and sitting down himself, then added when no one moved. “Now.”

May was the first to sit down, dropping herself heavily down in the closest chair to her.

Now that she wasn’t being blocked by Coulson’s broad shoulders and he could actually see her, he understood the reason behind Natasha’s stiff stance. It was clear that neither Clint nor Natasha knew what happened; the concerned glanced Coulson kept sending May’s way said that he probably did.

“What happened to you?” He questioned, once everyone reluctantly took a seat.

“Accident,” She replied tiredly, pointed ignoring Coulson’s gaze.

“Really?” He responded unimpressed. The least she could do was come up with a halfway decent lie or a ridiculous one like Barton would.

“In gym class,” She added, making it crystal clear that she did not find telling Fury anything important and he wasn’t going to get an answer.

“Oh yeah, my bad,” Clint winced. “Soccer accident.”

“We were taking her to the nurse,” Natasha added because they were apparently a united force of annoyance in his life.

Was it wrong that it made him proud?

And really annoyed? Someone was apparently hurting his students, specifically _that_ one.

“That’s where we ran into Coulson.”

“And then Sitwell,” Clint continued, spinning a web of lies with Natasha like it was their goddamn jobs, a couple of goddamn naturals.

“So, here we are,” Natasha finished.

“Explain your clothes,” Nick stated, observing the oversized shirt and what had to be Natasha’s pants. She was definitely not wearing that when they left this morning. He didn’t bother to mention the fact that they had gym two periods ago.

“I loaned her my sweater,” Coulson spoke up.

“Does that have anything to do with the flooded locker room?”

“Uh, no?” Clint replied, scrutinizing May and Coulson suspiciously.

 _‘Hmm, he doesn’t know,’_ Fury thought. _‘And he’s trying really hard to figure it out.’_

“May?”

“No.”

“Coulson?”

“Of course not, Mr. Fury,” Phil responded a tad too quickly.

“None of you are going to tell me a damn thing,” He observed out loud and didn’t get a response for any of them. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Go to class, we’ll discuss this at home, in length.”

Clint and Natasha stuffed out quickly after mumbling something about class and being late. May pulled herself out of her chair as the door slammed shut.

“Care to tell me what actually happened?” He tried once more for information.

“No.”

Not a ‘not really,’ or a ‘not right now,’ or hell, an ‘one day but not today.’ It was a resounding and definite ‘no’ that echoed around the room.  

It was a loss cause. Spies were like that.

“Okay then,” He sighed. “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” He asked because he told her, she didn’t have to treat her own injuries.

“Yes.”

“Okay then,” He sighed, not knowing if he believed her or not. “Go to class.”

“Uh, sir, while I’m here can I talk to you about student council,” Phil piped up. “We have some fundraising ideas that–”

“Yeah, whatever, May go sit down by Ms. Hill’s desk or go to the nurse. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

“Okay, so we were thinking about another pep rally to celebrate academic clubs like science – it was Garrett.”

Fury watched through the glass as May made her way over to Maria’s desk and sitting down heavily next to her before addressing Coulson’s confession. Maria slid over a bowl of peppermint candies and a paperback before returning to her own book.

“I stopped him but it…it was bad. It could have been really bad.”

He took a deep breath and looked to Fury, a sort of helplessness there.

Nick, for his part, put his poker face to use and stayed blank faced while he seethed underneath. He was angry, pissed off beyond belief because _goddamn,_ hadn’t she been through enough? He got it, you rolled with the punches and you got back up, but how many hits can one person take?

Melinda was _sixteen years old,_ she was a goddamn child without parents, who still barely ate and when she did sleep, it was under the bed, and now she had a bully who –

“– tired up, hitting her,” Phil continued rushing through everything. “I could have been worse. And… I don’t know if I’m always going to be there to intervene. She was stabbed!”

“What?” Nick could feel his stomach drop and his heart speed up because seriously, _‘What?’_

“Yeah, when she–” He cut himself off, eyes darting to Nick. He was uncomfortable.

_‘Why?’_

“Coulson,” He warned; the message to continue loud and clear.

“When she took her shirt off,” He said awkwardly. This was, after all, the equivalent of telling your girlfriend’s father that you’ve seen their daughter’s bra. Wait, did he just refer to May as his girlfriend? “Uh, to change into my sweater because of the pipe. Oh yeah, sorry about that.”

“Stabbed? She was stabbed, when?”

“I don’t know,” He replied. “She has a big scar on her shoulder. It’s pretty intense, where is she from that you just get stabbed?”

“Coulson,” Fury breathed out in relief. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Thank god, she wasn’t bleeding out while reading Maria’s trashy romance novel.

“Sir, what do we do?”

“Not we, what will _I_ do,” Fury told him.

Coulson, despite being the best teenager in the world, was still a teenager and he wasn’t old enough to have to deal with this shit. They were all too young to have to deal with any of this.

Coulson, Clint, Natasha, fucking May; they should all have the opportunity to be a kid, instead of it being ripped away from them day after day.

“No,” Phil retorted firmly. “No, us! She’s my friend. I’m the Bucky Barnes to her Steve Rogers.”

“Did you tell her that?” He smirked.

“No,” He stumbled out. “But, I mean it.”

“In what context?’ Fury asked, genuinely curious of his best and brightest train of thought. “You saving her form back alley brawls or you falling off a cliff?”

“Either way, it’s protecting her.”

“Garrett is going to be suspended.”

“That’s not going to work.”

“Why?” He asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I told May… I promised her that I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Then what, pray tell, do you think _we_ should do?”

“I… I promised her that I wouldn’t say anything,” Phil said, running his fingers through his already disheveled hair. “But I’m worried and promises mean nothing if she’s dead. And…and Garrett, if he got the upper hand might…”

“Expelled then.”

“She can’t know.”

“And she won’t.”

“Well how exactly are you planning on doing that because I think she’s going to notice if her attackers just disappeared.”

 _‘Yeah, of course, she would,’_ Nick stopped himself from snapping at the frazzled teen. _‘She’s a spy. I’m a spy. I’m the best fucking spy S.H.I.E.L.D. had ever seen, I can get rid of a kid without people noticing.’_

“I’ll handle it.”

“But–”

“ _I’ll_. Handle it.”

“You know you sound a lot like her,” He replied.

_Because spies get shit done._

“How are you–”

“Phil, go to class.”

“Actually,” Phil said, looking suddenly sheepish. “We were going to get lunch.”

“Whatever, I don’t care,” He growled because teenagers were infuriating as hell. “Get out of my sight. Go get your hamburgers or whatever, don’t get arrested.”

“Actually, we’re getting tacos.”

“Go.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fury,” He replied, dredging up a carefree smile from god knows before sliding out the door.

“We’ll try to fit in your pep rally in somewhere,” Nick told him from the door.

“See you later, May,” Maria said as May stood up to join Coulson.

“Goodbye.”

“Bye, Ms. Hill, Mr. Fury,” Coulson said his goodbyes before he and May shuffled out the door. “You and Ms. Hill have a good talk?”

“Her taste in literature is abysmal,” May answered. “But entertaining.”

“So, tacos?”

“Tacos.”


	12. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

Phil doesn’t think that he has ever seen May eat anything.

The thought kind of filtered into his mind and took root, and he remembered that she didn’t bring anything to lunch and she didn’t eat the school lunch. He didn’t think that she was just one of those people that didn’t eat a lot either because that was her third taco. Then again… she has been having one hell of a day.

“Melinda?”

“Phil?” She responded in the same matching questioning tone as him, ripping open a packet of hot sauce with her teeth.

“How long has Garrett been bothering you?” Phil wouldn’t normal pry – he wasn’t a pryer – but he needed to know. It wasn’t for Fury, though he probably did want to know, but for himself because he was May’s friend.

“A while.”

“A while?” He repeated. “What’s a whole? You’ve been at the school for a while.”

“Yep.”

“So, since the first day?”

“Basically.”

“May, you should have said something!”

“Why?”

“Because you were being harassed and assaulted!”

“I’m fine.”

“That doesn’t matter,” He replied. “Well, it _does_ matter but being harassed is not something that you have to just deal with. There are people who can help you.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” She told him. It really didn’t.

Yeah, sure bruised shoulders and having the corners of her books bent from being flung across the floor was annoying. She was not defenseless; she could defend herself when she needed to.

“It didn’t impede my function.”

That was the wrong thing to say she realized a second too late because Phil froze. He didn’t even look like he was breathing until he moved again.

His eyes lifted up to hers, hard set and boring into her, and his jaw set.

“Melinda,” He said slowly. “Your _function_ is not the most important thing about you. You’re not…not some prop. You’re not defined by your ability to fight.”

May looked away first, a sign of weakness she told herself.

His words echoed around her head and she couldn’t bring herself to agree with him. She _was_ a protector, a shield, didn’t he get that?

Who cared that he had targeted her, she could handle it. She had experienced far worse. It was better that it was her than Fitz, or Simmons, or Hank Pym with his ant farm.

“Melinda,” Phil said softly because she had spaced out again and he was nervous that she would freak out _again_. Because no matter what he said, she _was_ defined by her ability to fight, by her ability to subdue whoever touched her in two seconds flat.

Garrett was right. No one would come to the aid of the Cavalry, so she had to be her own. Her function was important. It was what kept her alive this long, despite all the people who fell around her.

“Melinda,” He repeated.

But that wasn’t right, was it? Phil, with his wonderfully concerned eyes that felt too much like seeing into the looking glass, into a better life, a safer life, he was there. He came to the aid of the Cavalry. No, he came to _her_ aid.

He gave her dry clothes, and juice, and kept her secret. He didn’t have to do that.

“Melinda,” He tried again, reaching across the small table to lay his hand on her shoulder. She startled out of her thoughts, her eyes darting to his.

“Why did you help me?” She asked. Why had he done any of the things that he has done for her.

Why today? Why did he help her fix her arm in Admin on her first day? Why did he invite her over to have lunch with his friends and try to comfort her when she panicked? Why has he done anything for her?

He doesn’t even know her, not really, not at all.

What was his motive, what does he want?

“You’re my friend,” He told her simply.

Was it that simple though? Was anything?

“You don’t have to think of me as your friend,” He assured her. “I know whatever happened before you came here has clearly shaken you up” – _understatement –_ “but I want you to be safe and I need you to know that you’re more than a couple of fist or John Garrett’s punching bag.”

“I can defend myself,” She told him, ignoring the voice in the back of her head that said, _‘no you can’t’_ and all the examples that floated around her mind of when she failed to protect anything.

“But you don’t have to,” He said softly. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

 

“So, I see you’ve dragged May into your squad of troublemakers.”

“They aren’t troublemaker,” Phil replied, knowing Nick would not miss May listening intently to Fitzsimmons’ rambling or her walking to class with Ward. “And that’s a terrible way to greet your guest.”

“Yeah, I should work on that,” Nick deadpanned, closing the door behind him and following him into the living room.

“Then the girl scouts will start knocking on your door again and my mom can stop buying Thin Mints for you,” Coulson laughed. “Where’s Barton?”

“Someone say my name?” Clint asked from where he laid on top of the bookshelf.  “You bring it?”

“I brought it?”

“It’s drugs, Nick,” Clint told him with his face totally serious, except for his eyes that danced with delight. He jumped down from the bookshelf and greeted Phil with a high-five.

“Well, don’t overdose,” Nick responded. “Dead bodies don’t go with the décor.”

“It’s a movie, sir,” Phil assured with a smile. “When is everyone getting here?”

“Tony and Bruce have to do a thing and then they’ll be over.”

“A thing?”

“A thing,” Clint replied. “A techno-babble thing; I didn’t ask. I don’t want to know, plausible deniability and all that.”

“Where’s Thor?” He asked.

“He had that thing.”

“Oh yeah, that _thing.”_

“I don’t really care for that thing.”

“Me neither. But hey, more popcorn for us.”

“Where’s May?” Coulson asked. “And Nat.”

“Don’t,” Nick warned as soon as Clint opened his mouth to yell. “Yell.”

“They’re outback,” Clint told Phil. “Doing peaceful ninja stuff.”

“Yoga,” Fury supplied when Coulson turned to him in question.

“Apparently very zen,” Clint said with a shrug. “It’s very boring. But May does it in the morning and Tasha’s like her weird Russian double.”

Clint then proceeded to throw himself onto the couch next to Nick while Phil sat in the old Laz-e-Boy.  It wasn’t long after that, that the back door slammed shut and Natasha came bounding through the living room.

“Hey, Coulson,” She greeted as she passed into the kitchen before returning with two bottles of water. She twisted the cap off one of the bottles and took a long drink. Her hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail and her skin had a shiny sheen to it. “We doing movies?”

“You bet your ass we are!”

“Clint,” Nick warned, looking at him with an ‘are-you-really-fucking-serious’ face that he found really early on you will develop if you deal with teenagers on a daily basis. They’ve talk about the swearing.

“Sorry!” He said but they both knew he didn’t mean it. “I was in the circus; no one watched their language there.”

Nick leveled an eyebrow at him, clearly unimpressed by his bullshit response. That excuse didn’t fly the first time he used it.

“We’re going to get May to watch Lilo & Stitch,” He rephrased.

“Where is she?” Coulson asked. Natasha quirked her eyebrow at him and a smirk crept up her face. “Shut up.”

“She’s finishing up,” Natasha replied. “Actually–”

“Hey, Phil,” May said from the doorway. She was dressed in shorts and a tank top with her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and fuzzy socks, Coulson could not imagine what people thought was so scary about her.

“Hey,” He smiled. “So, you do yoga?”

“Tai-chi,” She replied, taking Natasha’s pre-offered water bottle before sitting cross-legged on the floor.

“We’re watching Lilo & Stitch,” Clint told her. “So, you can see the comparison between Pleakly and Fury, trust me there is one.”

“You know Clint,” Natasha smirked. “Making fun of someone’s physical ailments is bullying.”

“Yeah Clint,” Nick agreed, sharing a grin with Natasha. “I’m hurt.”

“No, you’re not,” Clint replied with a _psstt._ “You’re like as thick skinned as that – whatever they make Captain America’s shield from.”

“Vibratium and–” Coulson began smiling the smile he had when he was talking about his trading cards.

“Yeah that!” Clint cut in. “And totally not the meanest thing anyone has ever said about you. You should have heard what Tash-HA!” He exclaimed as he caught the cap of her water bottle that she threw at him.

There was a knock at the door, stopping Clint from spilling any of Natasha’s secrets and trying to ‘ruin her place as Nick’s favorite with his lies’ as she put it.

“Nat, get the door,” Clint said, hopping up from the couch and shimming up the bookcase. “I’m going to scare Tony.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and muttered something about boys and immaturity before leaving the room, the continuous knocking getting louder and louder the more they waited.

Natasha talked clearly and loudly, threatening more than talking because it was _Tony Stark_ after all, to let Clint know that she was walking through first. And she did, with a small smirk and Bruce by her side, arms linked together as she pulled him along.

Then Tony came in, rambling on over Natasha’s threats, about something-or-other until… “Ah, Christ, Barton, I hate you!”

Because Clint didn’t jump out and scare Tony, no, that would have been simple, easy, so completely and utterly Captain B, _Boring._ Clint jumped on Tony and they both fell to the ground with a clatter and a bunch of swear words because the floor was fucking hard and Clint landed on his elbows with his knee pressed uncomfortably – i.e. very fucking painfully – in Tony’s shoulder.

And did he mention ‘ _that my fucking head hit the fucking floor, Barton. I could have been concussed. What the fuck is wrong with you?’_ while Barton ignored him in favor of ‘ _fuck, damn it, can’t you, like fucking catch someone. Shit, Stark, my fucking elbow is probably going to fucking bruise, you goddamn athletic failure.’_

Then Fury cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow, Tony went quiet and Clint went pale. And everyone else was just standing there because that was not what anyone thought was going to happen at all.

Then there was laughter, soft and musical, and Phil looked from the catastrophe that was Tony and Clint, still tangled up together, to Melinda.

Her hand over her mouth as music-like giggles escaped her mouth and her eyes were light and shiny, even around the bruising. She looked, better, happier, younger and then he laughed, and then everyone laughed. Clint pulled Tony to his feet before the giggles got to them as well.

 

Lilo & Stitch went over fine enough.

May and Coulson sat on the floor with their legs under the table and their backs pressed against the couch. Clint stayed perched on the back of Natasha’s chair while Bruce took the other one and Tony stretched out on the couch with Nick’s broken microwave, tinkering and complaining about watching this damn move _again_.

Seriously, again, because Nick has seen this movie enough times to be able to quote it, like Clint did throughout the movie until Natasha pushed him off the back of her chair.

And somehow, Nick got roped into watching the movie with them.

 _Whining,_ and ‘oh so pretty please, Nicky’ and ‘come on Principle Fury’ that was how he got roped into it.

He was getting soft.

So, he found himself subjected to Stark’s dirty socks and having screwdrivers dropped into his lap throughout the damn movie. But it was… it wasn’t completely a waste of time.

These kids were enjoying themselves and they wanted him there. It wasn’t like he was that overbearing parent that wanted to hang with the cool kids or whatever.

He got to see Natasha and Clint communicate with their made-up signs mixed with ASL, so Nick wouldn’t follow the conversation. And he saw them giggle and laugh with each other without every saying a word.

He got to see Banner relaxed and at ease, and Stark in his element. He watched as Phil leaned close to May and she didn’t lean back, and how they whispered back and forth about nothing in particular.

By the end of the movie, Stark had fixed the microwave (thought saying he ‘supped it up so it doesn’t suck’ made Nick think that his bowl of Ramen might sprout legs and walk out of it), Natasha and Clint had somehow managed to be completely entangled and comfortable on the chair. May was asleep against Phil’s shoulder.

 _‘Isn’t that adorable,’_ Nick thought it was Tony who muttered it but he couldn’t help but agree (not out loud, though, he did have a reputation to think about).

A game of Apples to Apples broke out around the small coffee table and a quite discussion about if Nick was more like Pleakley or Bubbles as May slept on. No one had the heart (or lacked the common sense as Tony so gently put it because she was likely to probably snapped the arm of whoever touched her) to wake her.

It was a total of fifteen minutes before she startled awake; it had started with a twitch of the eyebrow and small distressing noises that everyone did their best to ignore. Then her head slipped from Coulson’s shoulders and cracked against the edge of the coffee table before anyone could do anything about it.

Her eyes snapped open and Coulson just barely missed her flying elbow.

“Melinda,” He said calmly as everyone kindly continued the game as if nothing had happened. “You alright?”

She gently touched the slim around her temple with shaky hands before pulling her back, confused by the pain. She let out a deep breath and sucked one in just as fast.

“I’m – I’ll be back.”

“Mel–”

“Like Terminator,” She said with a small smile before she pulled herself up unevenly on her socked covered feet, shaking the sleepy haze away before leaving the room.

“She’s not going to come back, is she?” Bruce asked quietly.

“She said she would,” Phil replied, as if all that was everything could be so definably set with a few words.  For people like Coulson, who saw the best in everyone and rolled with the punches when it got difficult, their word was all it took.

“I bet she doesn’t,” Tony said, sorting his red cards. “Your Howling Commando card, the one with the stupid mustache, for that one Barnes card you don’t have.”

“Mint-condition?” Coulson asked.

“Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“Deal,” Phil said seriously, shaking Tony’s hand from across the table. “And his mustache isn’t stupid.”

“You guys are such geeks,” Clint muttered.

“And there you go again,” Natasha jabbed him in the side. “Bullying people for things they can’t help. Phil can’t help his big ol’ crush on Captain America’s boyfriend.”

Coulson’s ears turned red and Nick wondered if he should go check on May just to avoid this stupid conversation, _again_.

“They’re not boyfriends,” Phil defended, an argument that lacked any real tact and one that Nick had heard a million times over.

“Uh-huh,” Natasha replied. “I’ve been through your phone. I’ve seen what fanfiction you read.”

The redness from his ears steadily worked its way down his neck and over his cheeks. He looked like he was trying to decide if it was worth denying or not.

“Shut up.”

It wasn’t.

“That’s so–” Stark began, surely with something snappy and witty that would completely destroy anything Phil could possibly say to make his apparent history fantasies any less…odd.

“I ship Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,” Clint said suddenly, making eye contact with everyone as if to tell them that if they were going to go after Phil than they were coming after him too and he was a lot less nice. “Picture it, Jefferson and his violin in the Senate with Madison having really, really–”

“No,” Tony said loudly and repeatedly. “I can’t do it. I have to learn about those guys in class; don’t make it awkward, Angry Birds.”

Clint grinned at Coulson, who returned a shy grateful smile back before all of their attention was drawn to May walking back into the room with that itchy looking white sweater from her closet and a blanket.

“I’ll take that Bucky card on Monday,” Phil said smugly as May sat down next to him, blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

“What are we playing?” She asked quietly.

 

Nick’s not-quite-a-suggestion that they should settle down was completely ignored, he acknowledged as he heard all the shouting and laughter that came with playing Uno for some goddamn reason.

As was his warning that they needed to be quiet and his threat that if they didn’t shut the fuck up and go the fuck to sleep he was going to taste them with his MHS taser.

They turned on Frozen and some point with that stupid soundtrack that had Clint and Natasha singing like two deaf-toned idiots and Bruce laughing, and apparently that was the gateway into playing Uno while Anna met the singing rocks.

And Nick stayed away, wishing more than anything that there was an actual door between his stupid futon and the gang of teenage annoyance that inhabited his living room.

It was two in the morning when Nick realized that the ruckus had quieted down, and that annoying movie was playing again. It was loud, which meant he had to get up. Which he might as well do because who knew if they locked the door before going to sleep.

The last thing he needed was Howard Stark down his throat because someone killed his spawn on Nick’s watch.

He bypassed the living room and that stupid movie to check the front door which was locked before returning to the living room.

Banner was asleep, curled up in the corner of the couch, while Stark laid with his feet handing over the other side. Natasha and Clint had somehow managed to fit comfortably in the chair sleeping with Clint’s head against her shoulder and her legs curled up in his lap. Phil and May were nowhere to be seen.

And as a general rule, anyone could say over (within reason. Clint could not invite the enter school over…again) but they had to sleep in the living room. Nick couldn’t remember if he ever told May that one, but Coulson should know it.

They weren’t in the kitchen or the bathroom, or May’s room which he discovered as he was standing in the middle of the room, tired and ready to kill them. He felt a breeze from the window.

The window that was not opened just cracked enough to be about to fit your fingers under. Then he heard a voice.

“So other than the first aid, the flying, and apparently tai-chi, is there anything else I need to know?” Phil joked.

“I’m an international spy,” She deadpanned, and he laughed.

“And funny! I’ll add it to the list,” He chuckled. “How’s school going?”

Nick peered out the window to see Phil lying across the roof and May was sitting next to him with her knees drawn up to her chest.

“They all look at me like I’m a monster,” She stated monotonous looking up at the stars.

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do,” She insisted. “Everyone is afraid of me and all the, the small – weak – all the people who can’t defend themselves look at me like it’s my job and it’s–”

“It’s what?” Phil asked quietly when it because apparent she wasn’t going to continue.

“I’ll fail. I can’t defend them, I – I try and try and someone’s going to end up dead, hurt. Whatever.”

“It’s not your fault if people do bad things,” Phil said, sitting up on his side, so he could look at May.

“I’m supposed to be the shield,” She said, her voice tight like she was repeating words she had heard before. “I’m supposed to protect those who can’t.”

And she had heard those words before. They were S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fucking motto. She was probably raised on those damn words.

“We all are,” Phil said earnestly. “But it’s not your job alone. And if people get hurt when you’re not there then it’s definitely not your fault.”

“And if I am there?” She asked.

Nick’s heart broke just a little. She had been doing well; not really giving anything away so Nick thought that she was fine enough. He didn’t think she blamed herself but, then again, if he was her, he would be too.

“I–“Phil looked lost for a moment. “Unless you’re hurting people than it’s never your fault. Sometimes – sometimes we just can’t help people.”

He sounded so goddamn sure about it.

“Melinda, no single person can save everyone,” Phil told her. “Even Captain America needed the Howling Commandos.”

He lied back down, letting out a long sigh when she didn’t say anything.

“Last year,” He said painfully like he had ripped the words from his soul. “Thor has this brother who is, frankly really fucking nuts. Something happened to him before the Odionsons moved to the states. Thor doesn’t really talk about it, but Loki was just so messed up about it. I was trying to help him with it.”

Nick knew why it was so painful to begin for Coulson and he knew that Phil had not talked about this with anyone, not without lack of trying. Pepper’s been at it since he returned to the school.

“He had bad days, where he was really violent, and I could talk him down from it. He just…really hated Thor, but, like he didn’t. I mean, I don’t think he truly hated Thor, just wanted to.”

“He’d go and break all of Thor’s stuff and he threatened Natasha. He screwed around with Clint’s head, something that really fucked him up. Then one day, he had this…knife. He had a knife and it’s just me and him. And I’m trying to talk him down and then he just stabbed me.”

 “Through and through, right through the heart,” Phil continued, swallowing hard. “I thought I was dead for good.”

“And I saw!” He said with a humorless. “I was for eight seconds, my heart stopped but it felt like forever. Then I wasn’t dead, it just _hurt_. Not – not the – not it happening, but, you know, living afterwards.”

“My parents are soldiers. The military life has been my whole life. My whole family is, really. I know death – I’ve seen enough family members come back in a box with a flag – but it never felt so…”

“Personal?”

“Yeah,” He shook his head. “It never felt so personal. It was the living after it that got me because I knew that I could die and that I was scarred.”

He pulled down the collar of his t-shirt just enough to show May part off the raised skin on his sternum.

“Not everything is all sunshine and rainbows. I thought I knew that before but you don’t really get it until everything gets so screwed up, you know?”

She nodded her head  before she probably did know. She had probably experienced it too.

“Sometimes I think I’d rather have died then,” Phil confessed, the words falling heavily from his mouth, deafening and for a moment no one dared to breathe.

“Just…” He continued with a quick shake of the head. “Just because it’d be easier, the pain and the fear would leave. And it is so damn…selfish because I have people who care about me and people I care about. And god, I couldn’t just leave Clint like everyone else had. I couldn’t leave my mom or my dad, or…there would have been a lot of people left behind if I had died. But it was so hard being alive for such a long time after being that close to death. I didn’t think I’d make it through that year.”

“How did you?” She asked, barely above a whisper.

“Friends,” He answered her solemnly. “And willpower, and help. I accepted that I would never be that guy I was before the…before Loki. And I moved on, as hard as it was I moved on.”

“No one really knows what happened with me and Loki,” Phil admitted. “I don’t talk about it much, like you don’t talk about what happened to you. I can’t talk about it.”

“Because it’s like reliving it all over again,” She said quietly.

“Yeah,” He nodded in agreement, a sad little movement that, for Nick, felt like being punched in the gut.

“No one looks at you the same,” She continued, not looking at him. “Even people you didn’t know before. It’s like they can see that you’re broken.”

“You’re not broken.”

“I’m shattered.”

“You’re not–”

“I am,” She insisted. “And there’s no one left to put me back like I was. My parents are gone.”

She took a deep shuttering breath.

“And I was too late… I just miss them a lot. They’re all I’ve ever had. It was us three against the rest of the world, you know, sometimes literally.”

She let out a sad little laugh and swiped at her eyes.

“Things got bad and I got broken. There were times that I was so sure that we weren’t going to make it, but we did. We _always_ made it.”

Phil sat up next to her and put his arm across her back pulling her into his embrace.

“I got broken and they always put me back together and now I’m so completely shattered, into billions of little pieces and I feel like I left most of them in Bahrain. There’s no one left to put the pieces back together. I don’t think – I don’t think I can do it _myself_.”

Her voice broke at the last word, along with the rest of her composure. Nick couldn’t see her face but the shuttering movement of her thin shoulders under Phil’s arm was enough evidence.

“You don’t have to,” He told her, his own voice breaking as he hugged her tightly. “You don’t have to.”

Nick took his leave, leaving as silently as he came with sad eyes and a heavy heart.

 

 

 


	13. A Decent Cup of Tea

The fact that he was up at seven o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, listening to some birds chirp too loudly outside his window was annoying.

Very fucking annoying, if you asked him, even more annoying than those fucking birds.

And there wasn’t even anything keeping him awake. Well, no outside forces, just his own stupid mind replaying things that he had never experienced, words that he should never had heard, and an overwhelming crushing feeling of guilt that he couldn’t save May’s parents crashing inside of him like a tidal wave.

He didn’t even know their names.

He’d spent half the night making up scenarios and how, if he was there, he could have saved them and saved her from the heartache.

He gave up on the whole ideology of sleeping five minutes later and seriously debated going out and shooting those damn birds out of that tree. Tossing and turning all night had left him uncomfortable and frustrated, too uncomfortable and frustrated to stay in bed.

When he passed May’s room, he saw Phil sleeping, spread out across the width of her bed, but not her.

She was not in the living room with the rest of them either, so he checked under the bed. When he didn’t find her there, he checked the window again, just to make sure that she hadn’t made some grand escape last night after baring her soul to Coulson. He really wouldn’t have put it past her.

But sure enough, there she was.

Nick pushed up the window the rest of the way and leaned his head out to get a better look at her.

She was dressed in what he thought was one of Clint’s hoodies and a pair of leggings, sitting cross-legged with a book he’d never seen before. She pulled her eyes away from the book with a playful smirk on her lips before dropping it when she saw that he wasn’t Coulson.

“Hi,” and with that she turned to the next page.

“If I step out here am I going to fall to the patio below?” He asked as way of greeting. “I don’t think Mrs. Richardson would appreciate it.”

Mrs. Richardson being, of course, the nice old lady who rented out her top apartment to Nick and his forever growing bunch of government issued children. A very nice old lady, actually, who never asked questions and spent half the year with her grandson in Florida. Nick doubted despite her nicety that she’d appreciate coming home to find a Fury sized dent in her patio.

She shrugged her shoulders, which he took as a sign that she didn’t mind if he joined her rather than that she didn’t mind if he died in some patio related accident; he was looking on the more positive side of things with May today.

Her hair was damp, suggesting that she had been up for a quite a while or had not been to sleep yet. A part of him was slightly annoyed that he couldn’t remember if he heard the shower turned on at any point in the night.

“What are you reading?” He asked, sitting down against the paneling of the house. She held up the book, so he could see the cover.

 _Invisible Monsters._ “Is that the guy who did Fight Club?”

She nodded, her eyes still scanning the pages.

“Where did you get it?” Nick asked because it was not one of his, and Natasha preferred book about Russia written by people who have never been to Russia (it was a very small category that she found a little too amusing) and Clint was partial to Green Arrow comic books. That meant that she had either stolen it or borrowed it, and Nick knew that she hadn’t been to the library.

“Victoria.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Hand,” May said slowly, looking up from the pages.

“Oh.”

He didn’t know that they had even spoke to each other before.

Though granted, May did spend her afternoons in the administration office and went in there if she was feeling overwhelmed. Nick just didn’t think they actually exchanged any words. He had figured that May showed up on that first day and Hand put her to work.

“I need to see Steve Rogers,” May said, placing her bookmark in the ear-marked book. Definitely Victoria’s.

“What?”

“I need to see Steve Rogers,” She repeated like the idea was not simply ludicrous.

“What makes you think I know where he’s at?”

“Because you work for S.H.I.E.L.D.,” She said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not stupid.”

“I’m just a principal,” Nick pointed out.

“But you know,” She accused. “You know because I knew and I’m not even technically S.H.I.E.L.D.”

 _‘But she might as well have been,’_ Nick thought bitterly.

“We always had some sort of tab on where he was,” May said. “Ever since he came out of the ice, not exact locations or mission details or anything because that would be stupid and endangering to him. But we always had some idea of what he was doing.”

“We?” He asked.

“There is no clearance level on gossip and gossip travels through government agencies faster than in high school,” May continued, ignoring his stupid question that he obviously knew the answer to. “And Cap is the star quarterback. You know where he is.”

“What do you want from me,” He asked. “I can’t give you a frozen World War II soldier,”

“I need him to come to the school,” May stated plainly. She wasn’t begging or asking, just telling Nick how it was. “Give a big speech on whatever, talk about the war, or America, or something.”

Nick thought briefly that this was the most she had ever said to him, “Why?”

“For Phil.”

“ _Why_?”

“Because he is a good person,” May stated simply. “And he deserved to meet his idol.”

“And,” She continued with a shrug of her shoulders, with a nonchalance that Nick was pretty damn sure was going to juxtapose her words. “I’m not sure if Ms. Hill or Victoria has a bigger pull with the World Council than you, but you know Pierce so I started with you.”

“How–” Nick stopped himself, taking a deep breath because he imagined he was not going to like the answer. “How do you know any of that?”

“It’s a S.H.I.E.L.D. school.”

“It’s _not_ a S.H.I.E.L.D. school,” Nick replied.

“But it is,” May insisted. “I know the agents – Hand, Hill, Sitwell, Weaver, _you_ – teachers. They recognized me, some of them. And I’ve heard of some of them. Maria Hill is legendary, _Nick Fury._ ”

She said his name like she was accusing him, which he guessed that she kind of was. Nick knew that he had a rep in S.H.I.E.L.D. and that his tactics and missions were infamous. He had personally helped Peggy Carter, and then Pierce, develop the agency into what it was today.

It never occurred to him that she would have known.

“Why did you ask me if I was S.H.I.E.L.D. on the first day?” Nick asked.

“How else do you tell if someone is lying if you don’t start with questions that you know the answers to?” She smirked at him.

“And like I’ve said, I’ve been to the Triskelion,” She added, shrugging. “If you can get through the front door, everyone accepts that you’re supposed to be there. People are much like bees in that way.”

“What does that mean?”

“I spent a lot of time in administration,” Melinda explained with an eye roll. “No one pays attention to a _child_.”

He raised his eyebrow at that.

“And my parents had high clearance.”

“So, you, what, _hacked_ S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“Is it hacking if you’re in the building?”

“Yes.”

“I was just using the resources that I had at hand,” She shrugged.

“By which you mean your parents’ credentials and hacking.”

“I–” May narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re getting off topic. Captain America, school, Phil, make it happen.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” He said simply in return. “But only if you actually _make_ it to all of your classes this week.”

“Deal.”

“And answer my question.”

She went still, her hand halfway to her book and her eyes locked with his. Nick thought that he could actually see the anxiety growing behind her mask of indifference. _What happened in Bahrain?_

_It’s like reliving it all over again._

Nick didn’t think he wanted to know what happened in Bahrain anymore.

“Why don’t you want S.H.I.E.L.D. to find your parents killer?” He asked, stating bluntly the question that he wanted to know for as he had known her, wanted to know why she was standing in the way of what could be relief and comfort, security and justice for her.

She was quiet for a while, looking in his direction but not at him. Nick wasn’t sure if she was seeing anything or stuck in some image of her past; something like regret ate at the bottom of his stomach.

“I handled it.”

It was all she said, in a voice that was as cold as the artic and as hard as steel, lacking all of the warming demand that she held a few moments ago. And it slammed against Nick with all of the force of a speeding car; it almost knocked the breath out of him.

He regretted the question, regretted asking it, and he regretted taking away that warmth and that playful smirk. He regretted reminding her of what she lost. He regretted even thinking to ask the question.

Her shoulders were tense, and her lips pushed together into a narrow straight line. She looked farther from that little girl in the picture in the file than she ever had.

Nick was reminded of the day he met Peggy Carter. May looked older and world-weary, and like her eyes had seen things Nick would never believe. And like Peggy’s, they probably had. But unlike Peggy who came out stronger and better and more powerful than anyone had any right to be, it left her broken.

“Something went wrong,” May continued slowly, anger laced her words and her eyes burnt hot with the fury of a thousand collapsing stars, like she was stating it to herself, reconfirming what she already knew.

She said no more before standing up in one fluid motion and climbing back through the window.

Nick didn’t follow.


	14. Vital Signs

Two weeks passed without incident.

And Nick was suspicious.

Two days after that conversation, two days of May being withdrawn, and jumpy, and Clint and Natasha bitching at him about it (because _‘we know you did something, Fury, we just don’t know what so fix it!’_ ). Then May asked for a radio and gave no explanation as to why she wanted it.

Three days after that conversation, Nick gave her one.

A week after that conversation, Fitzsimmons’ I.C.E.R. prototype replaced all the tasers at the school (Nick was not now, not even calling it a Night-Night gun, no matter how much Fitz whined about it).

Two weeks of no incidents at school or at home.

May went to all her classes and after those two days and even started to join into Clint and Natasha’s conversation again. She participated in their sparring, taught Barton some of her moves and he taught her some of his, and practiced ballet with Natasha. She did her homework with the others and even helped Natasha prank Clint.

Two weeks of no incidents and Nick was suspicious. Something was going to go very wrong, very soon.

And it did.

Exactly two weeks and two days from the damn conversation, Maria busted through his office door.

Steven Levins released a hallucinogenic gas into the gym.

He said it was an accident.

Nick thought it was less of an accident and more of an ‘I wonder what will happen if I pumped gas into the gym during fourth period’ stupid ass thing to do. He didn’t have the chance to really look into it at the moment because everything went to hell quickly after that.

And really, it was probably a long time coming.

For a school of geniuses and probably one of the best labs from here to Stark Tower, they were rather relaxed on lab rules, citing Howard Stark’s ‘rules block creativity and innovation’ logic. If you passed the lab safety test (which involved watching a poorly acted film and a ten question quiz) and signed the safety waved than you had free range to do whatever you wanted with little to no supervision.

Stark threw himself into a wall working on rocket boosters and the only consequence that happened was that someone put it up on YouTube.

Like seriously.

There were only two rules

  1. Wear your goddamn goggles
  2. Don’t blow up the school



And Fury thought they should probably add ‘don’t be a fucking idiot and release a hallucinogenic gas into the gym, ever but especially not if Natasha Romanoff was in it.’

Seriously, common sense, people!

The school was in chaos because of fucking Steven Levins.

Nick thought as he, Maria, Sitwell, and Hand armed themselves with gas mask and I.C.E.R.s that he was actually going to kill that kid.

No, he was going to let him have a go with Natasha.

Natasha had choked out two security guard with her _thighs,_ and managed to rip the mask of another one before Nick had the opportunity to put the I.C.E.R.s to use.

It was effective as hell in stopping the Russian demands to know where the hell they were keeping her. He managed to catch her before she hit the ground, then left her to Victoria, who was currently herding out all the kids who didn’t have traumatic pasts to revert to when exposed to _hallucinogenic gas._

Fuck Levins. Seriously, fuck that guy.

Hallucinogenic gas should not even be something you have to factor into your life.

Banner had destroyed the weight room and got a good hit to the side of Sitwell’s face before they iced him.

It took nearly two hours for Coulson, dragged out of Spanish again, and Maria, to talk Clint down from the rafters (where he apparently kept a fucking bow and a stack of arrows before he threatened to shoot anyone who took a step towards him). He demonstrated just how serious he was by almost taking off Nick’s ear.

He demanded that Nick tell him what the hell he did with Barney or face the wrath of The Amazing Hawkeye. When Nick told him that Barney wasn’t there, Barton dropped the bow and arrow down to the gym floor and climbed down.

He didn’t say anything for over an hour after then, even to Coulson.

Then it was just to ask if he knew where Barney was, in a voice that was so, so very little and so very lost.

It took until Nick found a security guard knocked out and his I.C.E.R. missing for him to realize that May was in that class, and that she was missing.

And with her? Grant Ward.

She was not in administrations, or his office, or the roof, or in the vent.

In fact, they were not in the school at all because she was in Nick’s car.

And he knew _that_ because his car was not there.

His keys were there which made everything slightly more annoying.

He waited until seventh period before taking Maria’s keys and telling her to keep an eye on Barton and field any of the calls about the gas leak until he got back.

“Nick.”

“Don’t say anything,” Nick warned as Maria leaned back in her chair.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” he responded innocently, holding her hands up.

“Yes, you were.”

“What would I possibly say, sir?” She asked, fighting a smile. “Just that a sixteen year old girl stole your super-spy car that you swore couldn’t be broken into, the same girl that kicked your ass a month ago.”

“She didn’t kick my ass,” Nick groaned.

“She slammed you into the lockers,” She smiled. “I _really_ like her.”

“Whatever,” Nick grumbled. “Watch Barton, keep him out of the vents.”

“Call me when you find her,” Maria called after him.

 

The first thing he found was his SUV parked hazardously halfway on the sidewalk. Nick wondered briefly as he observed the park job, the open car door, and exposed wiring, if May even had a license.

She probably had multiple ones, actually.

The second thing he noticed was the music, even before he got to the door, the door that was not only unlocked but left wide open. The oddly soothing otherworldly tones of David Bowie’s Soul Love greeted him as he stepped over the threshold.

Nick’s hand stayed on his I.C.E.R. as he continued on to the living room; the lock didn’t look tampered with and nothing looked out of place, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He was welcomed to a gun pointed in his face as soon as he stepped into the living room.

A real gun.

A very real gun.

“Melinda,” He said cautiously, hands rose above his head.

Her hair was wild and messy, and he was pretty sure there was a dead leaf tangled in there. A gash was still seeping blood down her temple, and her cast was long gone. There was a tear in the sleeve of her jacket and her eyes were still clouded from the gas.

“What happened to you?”

“What did you do?” She demanded slowly, enunciating her words to hide the slur. “What did you do to me?”

The living room was in disarray, there was a bullet hole in the plaster by the door leading to the kitchen and in a pillow.

She found a pack of bullet that could have only come from the back of the hall closet, dumped all over the table and spilt over onto the floor. Books were pulled out of their spots, left open on the table or tossed on the floor, even a chair was overturned and there looked to be blood in the corner.

“There was a gas leak from one of the labs into the gym,” Nick told her. “Hallucinogenic. Whatever you are experiencing, whatever you’re seeing, it isn’t happening right now. You’re safe.”

She didn’t say anything, just kept the gun pointed at his head.

“Where did you get that?”

“I found it.”

“What happened to you?” Nick asked again.

“It got difficult,” She told him, her eyes darting quickly to the couch and then back to him. Ward was there, looking just as worse for wears as May did, but he wasn’t moving.

“Did you–”

“I didn’t shoot him,” she said, voice still cold and distracted, but her eyes slide from his to something over to his left. “I saved him. He hit me, I used this.”

She held up the I.C.E.R. that she stole off the security guard.

“It’s useful.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, only mildly concerned with the fact that she probably didn’t know what the gun did before using it. “Mind putting it down?”

He gestured to the gun she had pointed at him.

“Yes.”

“Melinda–”

“You’re S.H.I.E.L.D., you can’t be trusted.”

“What does that mean?” He asked.

“The music in your car is stupid,” She said instead of answering his question, her eyes darting away from him to the bookshelf in the corner. “Who listens to U2? No one likes U2. And… and your seat is too far back.”

“May, put the gun down,” Nick said slowly.

“It’s all your fault,” She whispered, not looking at him. “They’re gone – S.H.I.E.L.D….and it’s all – they knew we were coming. How did they know?”

“Melinda, what are you talking about?”

And then she shot, shattering a vase on the bookshelf.

“Where are they?” She demanded, voice low and shaky as she pointed and took aim at something Nick could not see. “What did you do with them?”

Her next shot embedded itself in the wall next to the window before she turned the gun back onto Nick.

“Tell me,” She demanded. Her eyes were brimmed with tears and shaky hands held tightly around the gun. “Tell me, or, or, I will kill you.”

_‘Well now, that’s just bad interrogating.’_

The gun slid out of her grasp, and she fell unconscious against Nick, his own gun pointed. He was going to give Fitzsimmons a goddamn metal for these stupidly named guns.

 

The first thing May did upon waking up was to reach for the gun.

Her movements were clumsy with the aftereffects of the tranquilizer. She only managed to knock it off the table and crashing her shoulders painfully into the corner of it before regaining her balance.

It was the clattering sound of metal sliding across glass that alerted Nick to her presence. He ended the hushed conversation that he was having on the phone without a goodbye.

If May was in the right mindset than she probably would have been suspicious of that.

“You’re safe,” He told her, picking the gun off the floor, empty of all its bullets. “I’m Nick Fury, and you’re at my house. You can have this if it’ll make you feel better, but you are safe.”

She snatched the gun out of his outstretched hand and checked for bullets. Upon seeing was empty she tossed it to the side and muttered something that sounded like ‘useless.’

“I–” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I’m fuzzy.”

“Curtsey of this,” Nick said, holding up the I.C.E.R. “You’re right. Useful.”

“I almost shot you.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I almost _shot_ you.”

She didn’t say anything more after that. Didn’t apologize, she wouldn’t apologize, and he wouldn’t expect her to do so. She was confused, and Nick certainly looked like a threat even when he wasn’t. He couldn’t fault her even if he wanted to.

Her attention was drawn to the couch where Ward sat, shuffling a deck of old cards awkwardly in his hands.

“You okay?” He asked her when he noticed her gaze.

Nick didn’t think that he was talking about being iced, and reminded himself to grill the boy about it later.

“I’ve had worse.”

“That’s good,” He said, nodding and then shaking his head no. “Well, not _good_ that you’ve had worse but yeah.”

“I have to stop by the school,” Nick told her, keeping the annoyed sigh out of his voice, because he was still the principal and there was still, what the newspapers were reporting as a ‘gas leak.’ “Barton and Romanoff are at Stark’s.”

Clint had said it was so they could eat all of Tony’s imported snacks. Natasha said it was so they could get drunk on all of Howard’s imported Scotch. Nick supposed it was probably a bit of both and the company of someone who could get their minds off all those feelings and images dredged up by the gas.

Clint wanted to feel normalcy, Natasha didn’t want to feel anything at all – Tony’s was the place for both.

“I’ll give you a ride over if you want,” He called to her as he pulled his trench coat out of the hall closet. “Ward, I can drop you off at home.”

They had both declined.

 

Nick came home, three hours after the school day had ended, to find May, Coulson, and Coulson’s motley group of misfits doing a puzzle at the kitchen table. There was a heated debate that was not deterred by the arrival of their eye-patched principal about cavemen and astronauts.

David Bowie’s Hunky Dory crooned softly in the background, wrapping around words and puzzle pieces like a surreal dream.

May made eye contact with him from across the room, sandwiched in between Coulson and Fitz, and she nodded, short and sharp just to let him know she’d be okay.

Simmons had said May’s arm was ‘healed enough’ as long as she wore the splint again and avoided strenuous exercise before launching back into the argument.

They accepted that, for now anyways.

 

He woke up the next morning to find them all still asleep on every available surface of May’s bedroom. He called off work, put Maria in charge, and decided to let sleeping children lie.

He cursed himself that he didn’t have a gun or, at the very least, an I.C.E.R. on him when he saw a moving shadow pass across the hallway’s entrance to the living room.

He’d just taken a silence step back towards his room when, “Nick.”

It was said simply like the asshole didn’t break into his house. Nick rolled his eyes and scowled.

“Pierce,” He said with a nonchalance that covered his irrigation and then walked into the room.

Alexander Piece, sure enough, was there in his three piece suit and an air of casualness as he examined the bullet hole that now dotted the walls. His eyes flickered to the blood, now dried on the floor, before boring into Nick’s.

“Redecorating?”

“You do know how to use a phone, right?”

“I did call,” he said like he was distracted, his eyes leaving Nick’s to go back to observing his bullet ridden walls. Nick knew better than to assume that Pierce was anything but alert. “You weren’t in your office.”

“Called off.”

“I know, I heard what happened yesterday,” He looked back to Nick with a raised eyebrow. “What _did_ happen?”

“Lab mishap.”

“We need to talk.”

He gestured to the couch, inviting Nick to sit with him before sitting down himself, like it was his fucking couch. Nick complied, like he had a choice anyways.  “Have you learned anything new from our little…project.”

“She’s not a project,” Nick said defensively. May thought herself a lot less-than-human, he didn’t need other people enforcing that belief. Pierce raised an eyebrow in response to the sudden edge in his voice and Nick cursed himself for giving himself away so easily. “Nothing relevant.”

“So, she _has_ said something.”

“She said,” Nick sighed, looking over his shoulder before lowering his voice because May had a habit of appearing out of nowhere (to the point that Nick was seriously considering taking Clint’s suggestion and getting her a bell). “That it was handled.”

“What was handled?” Pierce asked interested.

“She didn’t elaborate,” Nick said flatly. “I think, and I’m not really sure but, I think that she thinks at least, that they were set up.”

“And she said that?”

“She alluded to it.”

“Nick,” Pierce said, looking him in the eye, talking to him in that voice that he used when he wanted something and what you gave wasn’t good enough. “It is of the utmost importance that we know what she knows.”

“Why?” Nick asked because he may not be out doing missions, but he was respected by Pierce, clearance level be damned when you went as far back as they did.

And he really wanted to fucking _know_.

What was so important about this? What was he supposed to be looking for?

“What is so important about Bahrain?” He asked after a moment.

“We don’t know if the threat was neutralized,” He replied. “I need you to get her to talk.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Work faster.”

“I’m _working_ on it, Alex,” He repeated. “She’s not exactly Chatty Cathy.”

“There’s another thing I need from you,” Pierce said, pulling a folder out of his briefcase and holding it out to him.

“I’m not taking in anymore kids,” He stated flatly, eying the folder with the same weariness one would eye an open flesh wound.

“Not that,” Pierce huffed out a laugh. “A mission.”

“I can’t leave my school,” He said instead of _I’m not leaving my kids.’_

“You don’t have to go anywhere,” He reassured, shoving the folder into his hand. “Just plan the damn thing. You’re the best damn strategist that we’ve got and we need all hands on deck for this.”

 _‘If that was true, why am I a high school principal?’_ Nick thought bitterly.

“I’ll even let you use Captain America,” Pierce promised, sweetening the deal that he knew Nick didn’t really have a choice in taking anyways.

“I’ll do it,” Nick replied, because again, he didn’t really have a choice in the matter. “But only if Rogers talks to my students.”

“Deal.”

 


	15. Four Simple Words

There was a two week gap without an incident.

And then there was hallucinogenic gas, and guns, and Alexander Pierce sitting on his couch. Fury allowed the kids to skip school, and stood arms across and critical while May filled in bullet holes and repainted his walls.

Two weeks without incident so it only stood to reason that the next two weeks would be nothing _but_ incident, after incident, after another fucking incident.

And they _were._

Nick had a mission to plan and Natasha was suspicious of what was suddenly consuming his time.

_‘What’s with your sudden interest with the Indian Ocean, Nicky?’’_

_‘I like fish.’_

_‘Like what Indian Ocean fish?’ She challenged._

_‘Bramble Shark.’_

_‘Hell yeah, love me a Bramble Shark,’ Clint piped in. ‘High five me!’_

_‘Why do you know what that is?’_

_‘Why don’t you? Come on, Nick, don’t leave me hanging.’_

Stark set off an electromagnetic pulse that blew Clint’s hearing aids. Clint punched him in the face in response, disappearing into the school vents until they were fixed.

Romanoff short-circuited the entire school and almost electrocuted herself in shop class making what she referred to as ‘ _flippin’ awesome.’_ Stark and Banner almost, quite literally, blew up the school and Fitz knocked over a bottle of highly concentrated nitric acid that _did_ literally melt the floor.

And May?

May had always been difficult because she always held her cards close to her chest. Even if Nick did happen to see the cards, it wouldn’t matter because he didn’t have a fucking clue what game was being played.

May still had bad days where she was unresponsive or jumpy, with nights she didn’t sleep and mornings she didn’t talk. She hid out in Administrations, sorting through Hand’s filing system or she’d drop her backpack next to Nick’s desk and meditates on his floor.

Most days, Coulson could coax her out of it. Most days, Coulson showed up during his free period or during lunch and sorted papers with her. He’d sit next to her on Nick’s office floor and offer her half his sandwich.

Sometimes he talked, telling stories about stupid things he and his friends had done or about what he saw on TV the night before. Other times, he didn’t say a word and some days, he couldn’t pull her out of her head.

On one of those days, when he sat in silence next to her as Nick read through yet another budget report, she told him bluntly that she had slept with Ward. Nick, more than anything, really, _really_ wished he hadn’t been there to hear it.

She had started to disappear again, first skipping out on gym which well, Nick could get that. It wasn’t like he’d be all that thrilled to go back in there either, but then it was dodging Sitwell’s substitute teacher.

He would find her more often than not because she wasn’t really hiding just not going. He’d find her on the roof or in the labs with Bruce or Fitzsimmons. Sometimes she even sat with Pepper.

Mostly, he found her in Administrations with Victoria. He’d find them discussing books or movies that May _just_ had to check out as she helped her file.

It was during one of these times when Nick’s lecture on why the hell her ass should be in class (one that he knew for damn sure she wasn’t even listening to) was cut short by a snort from the door. Before he could turn around to tell whoever it was to fuck off, May was engulfed into a tight hug that lifted her off the ground.

“Hartley,” He rolled his eyes when the dark haired woman released May, who to Nick’s surprise was smiling and not stock-still and ready to fight. She was still weird about Coulson touching her, least of all someone she didn’t know.  “What are you doing here?”

“Can a girl not visit her wife, Nicky?” Harley grinned at him, mischief in her eyes before turning back to May. “Melinny.”

“Izzy,” May greeted with an honest to god smile.

“Look how big you’ve got!” She gushed, holding May out in front of her. “Vick, look at her!”

“I can see her,” Victoria smiled from beside Nick.

“When Vicky told me you were here,” Hartley continued. “I, of course, called bullshit. Melinda May, in a classroom? No way.”

“She’s not in a classroom,” Nick cut in. “Though that’s where she should be.”

“Cutting class,” Hartley observed her with critical eyes. May shrugged and Hartley grinned again. ‘Atta girl.”

“Melinda,” Nick addressed, unimpressed by both her and Hartley. “Calculus, go.”

May rolled her eyes but said her goodbyes to Hartley, with another hug, and Hand, with a halfhearted salute before leaving the room.

“What the hell was that?” He asked when the door closes behind her. This Melinda, the Melinda May who lived with him, had not so much as cracked a smile that wasn’t paper-thin or blatantly fake since he’d known her.

As it turned out, the Administration office that May spent so much time in was the one that Hartley had spent most of her time recovering from a broken leg in. And in a serious breach of international security, Hartley use to let little six years old Melinda read the paper files to help her learn English – _she was adorable back then, I’d let her have Russia if she’d asked._

“We’re all having dinner when I get back from this mission,” Hartley said in something between a threat and a fact before he had excused himself from the room.

It took Nick reminding her of their deal for May to actually _stay_ in class.

They were small incidents but incidents nonetheless.

And they were leading up to something big.

 

Nick has concluded that S.H.I.E.L.D.’s security system sucked.

He was pretty sure that there was not a universe in the entirety of the multiverse theory where S.H.I.E.L.D.’s security system didn’t suck major ass. They’re a spy organization!

He might even try to persuade Direction Pierce into letting Daisy and Stark have a go at it because it wasn’t like they could make it suck more. It really fucking sucked.

Two weeks of minor incidents passed with only minor inconvenience.

Nick, being the paranoid bastard that he was, had spent those two weeks waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When it did, it dropped like a ton of fucking bricks.

On Tuesday, when he was late because Clint had lost his shoes and Natasha spent two hours straightening out her curls. And really, he needed a better alarm clock.

Someone had hacked S.H.I.E.L.D. and got into May’s file. Someone had hacked into what was supposed to be the most secure government agency in the world, found a file on someone who should not have a file, and plastered it all over the school.

There was a part of him that was overjoyed, excited to figure out what finally happened in Bahrain, what May had kept so close to her chest, even at the cost of May’s own privacy. The feeling made him sick to his stomach.

He found, when he was ripping the random printed out sheets of her file that were taped up like new wallpaper off the door to his office, that it was the same redacted file that was given to him.

Which made it completely useless, it gave him nothing.

_Agent [BLANK] [BLANK] A****** and Agent [BLANK][BLANK] C****** bodies not recovered, presumed dead, by fire._

But it told every student in the school that Melinda May, _May, Melinda Q., A078624,_ was in Manama, Bahrain. There was a burnt building, a body count, and a very detailed medical report, with pictures of bruising, fractures, and cuts. The psych evaluation, precise and descriptive notes of the toll that Bahrain took on her, on the jumpiness, the PTSD, the fact that she shut down completely at the mention of Bahrain and lashed out violently to physical contact.

The psychiatrist didn’t get as far, made no breakthroughs before she was taken out of their care. And the very clear message that they thought, in their professional opinion, that therapy was essential to her recovery.

Nick told her, after shuffling her into his office and away from the onlookers and whisperers that she didn’t have to go to class, that she could stay in administrations or in his office, she could go home.

She left for class without saying a word, with weight of the truth on her shoulders and her head held high.

_What happened in Bahrain?_

_Are you a spy?_

_I told you she was a spy!_

_Did you kill someone?_

_How many people did you kill?_

_How’d you even get those bruises?_

_Can I see the scar for that one?_

_Did you kill your parents?_

_How’d they die?_

_Did you do it?_

_What happened in Bahrain?_

_What happened in Bahrain?_

_What happened in Bahrain?_

She never made it to first period.

Neither had Coulson.

 


	16. Thing of the Past

“Just breathe, okay,” He said calmly, breathing loudly through his mouth and pushing the air out through his nose. “Follow me. In and out, come on, May.”

The quick breathes that filtered over the sounds of static didn’t leave him hopeful that she was listening. Phil let his head fall against the desk he was leaning against, wondering just where May got a radio from and why she was playing a station that didn’t play music.

 _‘White noise, I guess,’_ He thought. _‘Must comfort her or something.’_

“Melinda,” Phil called softly, thinking just how much white noise _wasn’t_ comforting her. “Can you please come out?”

He could feel her on the other side of the wood, could feel where she was edged in the back corner of the underside of the desk, shaking. Her breath shuttered against his eardrum, against his sigh and his wonder if there was ever not going to be something standing between them.

“You’re safe. It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” She exhaled shakily before sucking in a short breath that caught on a sob she tried to smother.

“It’s _going_ to be okay,” Phil repeated because he had to believe that it would be, because he didn’t know what they’d do if it wasn’t.

He had to believe that this whole thing would blow over and May would go back to be a semi-anonymous, unapproachable loner that hung out with Phil Coulson and his mismatch group of friends because that was what she wanted, what she needed. So, he needed it too. More than anything.

And it would happen, given time. A week, maybe two, they just had to wait that long.  Everything would blow over as soon as someone stole Scott Summers glasses again or Tony blew up his lab. It’d blow over.

“Grant Ward,” She breathed out, her voice sounding steadier than before but not by much.

“Do you want me to get him?” Phil asked, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice.

Don’t get him wrong, he was thrilled, _more_ than thrilled that May was getting along swimmingly with his friends. And he was just as thrilled that Grant ‘not-a-team-player’ Ward found some sort of common ground with Melinda ‘icy-and-cold-reserve-is-my-middle-name’ May.

Phil was, in no way, insinuating that he, of all people, should be telling May what to do with her body, it was just… He wasn’t quite so sure she was in the right head space to be making decisions like that. He didn’t want her to be doing something that she could regret when she was more sound of mind.

Also, it was _Ward_!

What was so appealing about Grant Ward? It wasn’t like he ever had much of a sense of humor, and he was _way_ too particular about getting the measurements right in shop class (to the point that Phil agreed with Fitz, it was annoying as hell).

Other than the muscles, the perfect teeth, the jawline that would make Michelangelo weep, and…whatever, what was so great about him?

May clearly had a thing for muscular men judging by the way she stared at Thor, but that was Thor, everyone stared at him like that. Ward and his stupid perfect face sucked, Coulson decided, because he was not jealous, he was just concerned for May’s mental health.

Sometimes things needed to be handled with care and something like this –  this collapse of May’s façade, the cracking and crumbling of her icy persona for this moment – this needed to be handled with care. Ward couldn’t do that.

But she could do whatever she wanted, with whoever she wanted, he reminded himself. If she thought she needed Ward that he’d get her Ward.

Phil didn’t think May had a lot of freedom wherever she was before (apparently traveling the world with her S.H.I.E.L.D. parents and taking down creepy religious terrorist organizations) because she seemed to relish whenever she was given options.

She took pleasure in pushing the boundaries, pushing Nick Fury’s buttons. He thought that was why she skipped class so much.

“No,” She said, shaking her head frantically, enough to crack it against the side of the desk. “Grant Ward. He went to juvie.”

“Yeah?” Phil replied slowly, not really sure where this was going.

“Everyone thinks he tried to kill his brother,” May said quietly. “But…that day, the day with the gas, he told me. He said that his older brother used to make him beat up his little brother and, and there was a well…”

“I know the story,” Phil said softly.

“But everyone _thinks_ he tried to kill his brother,” She repeated.

“I know.”

“But he didn’t.”

Her breathing started to get rapid again and she sniffled.

“Mel, breathe with me,” Phil smoothed. “You were doing well, come on. Breathe in, breathe out, in and out. There. That’s it.”

“They think I killed my parents,” She said, voice heavy with held back emotions, with disgust and tears.

“No, they don’t.”

He didn’t even believe that himself.

“Yes, they do,” May said bitterly. “They think I killed my parents.”

“May, it’s going to blow over,” He told her confidently. “It’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not! They thought I was a monster before, they know now.”

“You’re not a monster.”

“ _What happened in Bahrain?”_ Her tone was mocking, self-loathing, and broken in every possible way, shattering Phil’s calm composer with the efficiency of a brick through a window. “Why do people keep asking me that? Why do you want to know?”

“You don’t have to tell them anything,” Phil insisted, sliding himself under the desk with her, their knees pressed against each other, as if he was her shield from their classmates’ harsh comments, from the secrets-covered hallways, and the harsh reality of the outside world. “You owe them nothing, Melinda.”

“They think I’m a monster.”

“Then fuck them,” Phil told her, startling a hysterical giggle from her with his harsh language. “You did what you had to do, whatever that was. It’s okay, forget about them. I know you’re not a monster, never forget that.”

“I am,” She whispered, looking all the world like a lost child. And really, Phil thought to himself, that was exactly what she was, a child, lost. “I _am_ a monster.”

Phil’s response that she was no such think was cut off by the door opening and slamming shut, by May stiffening, and the sound of loud combat boots. Then there was hand lowered into his line of sight holding a McDonald’s cup.

“Uh, thanks?”

Clint dropped to the floor in front of them, sitting cross-legged before handing May a drink of her own. He dug into an overstuffed McDonald’s bag.

“Figured you guys were hungry,” He said as way of greeting, passing fries to Phil.

“It’s second period,” Phil responded.

“Okay, I was hungry,” Clint admitted before his voice turned hard and his eyes grew serious. “I’m going to figure out who did this, promise. S’not Tony or Daisy, obviously, but I got them on it.”

“Doesn’t matter,” May said leaning her head against the wall.

“Of course, it mattered,” Phil assured because even if she didn’t care (which he suspected she did, a lot), he did. Also, it was a massive breach in the security of one of the world’s top government agencies.

“They know,” She responded. “I’m broken, and they know it.”

“You’re not broken,” Phil said instantly.

“So, what if you are?” Clint said over top of his words.

“Clint,” Phil warned. That wasn’t helping.

“My brother,” Clint said hesitantly when it became apparent that nothing Phil was going to say was going to sway that belief, nothing he could say was going to get her to stop looking so freaking sad. “After my parents died, not like they weren’t an entire dumpster of abusive trash, and we’d been through the ringer of bad orphanages. We, Barney and me, ran away; found the circus. I know, weird career choice but I was eight so sue me. That’s where I learned to shoot. World’s Greatest Marksman, you know.”

“But, uh, this guy, Swordsman – his name was Jacques, but we always had to call him Swordsman, he was that kind of douchebag – was my mentor. Well, I was his assistant. He was tight with Barney and everything. And everyone was going well, until I figured out that he was embezzling money from the circus, doing god knows what, but it got the C.I.A. onto us.”

“I got roped into it because an archer was useful and Barney was in on it. I didn’t know what to do, so I went along with it. And it was so much bigger, so much worse that I thought it was. Then I botched one of the heists, lost my hearing in the process. Everything went to shit after that one.”

“I was a liability then, and the Feds were onto us, so they ditched me,” Clint said with a sad smile. “Well, I say _ditched_ , more like beat the shit out of me in an alleyway and left me for dead. Barney was there, and I couldn’t hear anything; he was there, and he didn’t even fucking try to stop it. He walked away like I was yesterday’s trash.”

“I was found,” Barton said, voice light but it was forced. “Another man’s trash and all that.”

“Fixed up and stuck back into foster care without Barney. He was gone for good, and the fucking C.I.A. wanted to talk to me, so I did what I always do, I ran, and they caught me. That’s how I ended up with Nick – deaf, brotherless, and in some serious shit.”

“What I’m getting at,” He said, sighing loudly before looking directly into May’s eyes as if to make sure she was paying attention. “Is that we’re all fucked up, and we’ve all been broken. The only thing that matters is what you do with the pieces.”

Phil leaned over and pulled Barton into a tight hug, Clint didn’t like to talk about Barney, and the fact that he did was a testament to just how much he really did truly care about Melinda.

“Tasha had it worse,” Clint mumbled and then called out, “Right, Nat?”

“Tragedy is relative to its beholder,” Natasha responded cryptically, plopping down next to Clint and stealing his fries. “Not a competition.”

“How long have you been in here?” Phil asked.

“Enough to tell you that you’re not a monster,” Natasha responded seriously, looking at May. “You’re not.”

“You don’t…” She shook her head, looking away. “You don’t even know what I did.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Natasha said firmly. “I don’t need to know, it doesn’t make me anymore right.”

“I killed them,” She said sharply, in nothing more than a whisper. Her eyes shifted to each of their faces, looking for disgust, for repulsion, horror-filled eyes, but found only sadness, understanding, pity.

She didn’t know which was worse.

“To get the hostages, I…I killed them.”

“I’ve killed before,” Natasha confessed to her, with a shrug of the shoulders that didn’t quite display the dispassionate effect that she wanted, not to May.

Clint and Phil froze. It was an insignificant halt in action that would have gone unnoticed if she hadn’t expected it.

Natasha, May suspected, had told both of them. She probably whispered in the silence of the night when guilt and terror got to her. Or else, Natasha just dropped a bombshell on her friends.

Natasha’s eyes flickered over to Clint before taking a deep breath and continuing.

“In the Red Room, with the KGB, they made you or they killed you,” Natasha continued. “So, I killed. We do what we have to do to survive.”

“It doesn’t make it right.”

“Surviving isn’t always about being right, or fair, or nice,” She countered. “It’s about making it to the next day. According to the file, you went in there on your own with no weapons or back up. You saved eight people, _eight_ , and stopped a bunch of dangerous lunatics in the process, and you _survived._

“You should be proud of that,” Phil added, knocking their knees together.

“I didn’t save my parents,” She muttered.

“Files say they thought they were dead before you got there,” Natasha replied.

“They didn’t find the bodies.”

“There was nothing you could do,” Natasha told her.

“I should have gone in sooner,” She muttered, glancing away from Natasha’s gaze.

“We could kill ourselves with the guilt of what we could have done,” Clint added, shrugging his shoulders. “You did good; that should be enough.”

“We need you to eat this,” Natasha said, pushing Clint’s McDonald’s bag over to her. “And then we’ll blow this Popsicle stand and go to a bookstore, or a gym, or something.

“I have a math test,” May said, pulling fries out of the bag and passing them to Coulson.

“Math is for losers,” She smiled; May returned the smile, a bit more forced than Natasha would have liked but it was a smile nonetheless. “And Clint, but I kind of covered that with loser, right?”

“Hey!”

 

After the end of one of the most infuriating days of his life – a day he spent fielding calls from higher ups, threatening S.H.I.E.L.D. techs who couldn’t figure out where the leak came from (he was most definitely letting Stark have a go with the security program), and answering phone calls from teachers because half his students decided not to go to class today.

He returned home to find eleven of those missing teenagers reading in his living room and a radio, that he was pretty sure came out of Pepper’s office, played static on a low volume.

“Did you rob a library?” Nick asked as he shuffled around piles of books, ranging from Natasha’s oh-so-tiny American’s silly views of Russia selection to Science Fiction to books on the history of engineering and thermonuclear physics and everything else in between.

He was met with twenty-two eyes staring up at him before returning to the open books in front of them.

“How was this paid for?” He asked.

May held up her bookmark, black and shiny, the S.H.I.E.L.D. credit card.

“Hmm,” He hummed, not missing the smug smile that filtered across her features before disappearing with the flip of the page.

“Shhh,” was the sound that greeted him back.

He picked up a book and sat down.

 

The next day everyone was back to school.

And the day after that and the day after that, and that.

If the stares, the cautious behavior, or the gossip bothered May at all than she didn’t show it on her face. In fact, she showed almost no emotion at all. She went to class, sat through the lectures, and did her homework. It was mechanical, robot-like.

She walked the halls with her head held high, as the student body parted like the red sea around her, in the same way a warrior would walk over the bloated corpses of their enemies.

She went to class, she did her homework. She ignored the whispers they pretended she couldn’t hear, the wild theories about the Cavalry, about Bahrain.

The Ice Princess Façade she had created never faltered or slipped, only melted away ever so slightly in the presence of Coulson’s bright smile.

 


	17. My Poor Friend Me

“Don’t you have parents, or something?” The usher asked, running his frazzled hand through his shaggy hair. “Someone to supervise _all_ of you.”

Clint signed with his whole body, looking like a balloon deflating before he drew himself back up to stare down the usher with his bird-like eyes. May had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep the smile off her face.

“No,” He said in one long exhale of air. “Car crash took ‘em. How ‘bout you, Nat? What took yours?”

“Dem Russians,” She said in her thickest accent.

“Mom’s dead,” Bruce said with a ‘what do you do?’ shrug.

“Mine too,” Tony added. “And a father that might as well be.”

“Just me and my mum,” Fitz added as well, mouth full of popcorn.

“Orphan,” Daisy threw out after Ward’s comments on shitty parents and an aunt.

The poor usher, who was clearly just some college kid that wanted some extra cash for doing an easy job, was looking more and more like he’d rather be taking a final for a class he’d never been too. He turned his wide eyes wearily to where May and Coulson were standing off from the rest as if to ask, _and you?_

“Terrorism,” May said.

“I actually have both of mine,” Coulson admitted.  The usher seemed relieved by that.

“And his mom is enough for _all_ of us,” Clint chirped. “Seriously.”

“We really weren’t doing anything, mister,” Natasha said in a sickly sweet voice. She even batted her eye at him.

The usher, for his part, gestured around wildly at the mess of popcorn and skittles that covered the theater floor, and then to the Carmel Apple stuck to the movie screen, “You did _nothing?_ This is nothing?!”

Coulson gripped May’s hand in the shadowed casted on them in the dim theater. She could feel the surprised laughter shudder through him as she whispered through the side of her mouth to hold it together.

“Well…” Clint and Natasha began at the same time, but stopped when the door to the theater was ripped almost completely off its hinges. A soft _‘oh_ ’ followed.

Coulson almost completely lost it then. He only kept quiet because he squeezed May’s hand and bit his tongue.

The usher, with his wide comical eyes, turned to the door to see Thor walk in with a guilty look upon his face because he still was actually had the door knob in his hand.

“It’s those dreams arms,” Daisy mused.

“Mhmm,” May hummed in agreement.

“They aren’t _that_ dreamy,” Coulson muttered.

“No, they are,” May replied, as Simmons’ followed in behind Thor. Her arms were full of candy boxes and popcorn bags, speaking quickly about something or other that involved the circumference of Thor’s bicep and outer space.

“Guys,” She sighed when she looked around the theater. Her shoulders dropped forward and she rolled her eyes, looking all the more like an annoyed substitute teacher of a rowdy third grade class. “What happened?”

“Yes!” The usher jumped, his flashlight waved wildly at each of them. “Yes! What happened?”

“Well,” Natasha shrugged. “We wanted to make May feel like one of the gang.”

“Actually,” Clint drawled. “It all started with the day I accidently dumped my cereal on Nick Fury.”

“And lived to tell the tale,” Ward added.

“Nah, I think it started,” Tony cut in, stroking his chin in thought. “It started when Agent May – can I call you Agent May, Agent?”

“No.”

“Anyways, it started when Agent May went all ninja warrior on a bunch of crazy psycho terror- _Ooph._ If you hit me one more time Romanoff, I’m going to sue you for everything you’ve got!”

“Tight jeans and a hair straightener,” Clint mused. “I can see why you’d want that.”

“In the theater,” The usher signed, the question ‘ _why me?’_ present in his voice. “What happened _in_ the theater?”

“They didn’t follow the book,” Tony said simply, and Coulson lost it.

 

Coulson should have known that _something_ was going to go wrong when Tony Stark swaggered up to his lunch table and peered down over his designer sunglasses at him with _that_ look. He should have prepared for something to go wrong when Tony then said, “We’re going to the movies, bitches.”

If he followed that up with ‘ _if you don’t blow off that stupid safe sex seminar to hang out with your besties then they totally won’t judge you. I will but Bruce and the sass-sassins won’t,_ ’ then Coulson, as president of Student Council, should have considered getting a speaker on peer pressure. He should have especially done that considering that he caved like the Golden Gate Bridge in literally ever lame ‘end-of-the-world’ movie the moment that May said that she’d go.

He accepted that he had to go because, _of course,_ May would say ‘sure’ in that very May way that suggested that the option was only slightly better than gnawing her own arm off. May didn’t like crowd or being near the majority of the student body She probably didn’t like seminar either.

It wasn’t like she wouldn’t have noticed that the majority of the student body also didn’t like being around her. Of course, she wouldn’t want to go.  

He accepted the fact that any trip that involved skipping the last two periods of class, the phrase ‘we’re going to the mall bitches,’ and nine of his strong-willed and stubborn friends miraculously and _suspiciously_ agreeing to do something with no fuss was not going to end well.

It was pretty much the equivalent of the stars aligning on the eve of the apocalypse during a full moon on Friday the thirteenth while standing under a ladder with a broken mirror and a black cat shouting Macbeth at the top of his lungs. It was going to end badly and likely with them being on the wrong side of prison bars.

He was right.

Granted, it was mall security’s holding cells that they were all crammed into.

They were only here because Tony and Clint thought it’d be funny to piss off security by talking about how laughably easy it would be to escape mall security.

 Also, because Thor accidentally broken the handle off their office door and Natasha’s stared at them with unwavering glare until it freaked the officers out.

Not to mention that in a rare moment of lulled silence, Fitz said a little too loud that mall security was just a bunch of police academy flunkies.

But really, none of this would be happening, _none,_ if they’d just apologized to that poor usher and offered to clean up the theater instead of laughing until the usher got fed-up and called security. None of this would have happened _at_ all if they would have just gone to that damn sex-ed seminar.

In conclusion, Coulson needed new friends.

Tony was threatening to sue them for unlawful imprisonment and for generally _acting like a bunch of entitled dickbags._

He _really_ needed new friends.

None of them even seemed the slightest bit concerned that they had been arrested. Not even Fitzsimmons, who had a tendency to overreact.

Even Simmons didn’t seem the slightest bit frazzled by their current situation despite the fact that she freaked out about almost being late for class _this_ morning. She was as calm as could be where she stood whispering with Daisy in the far corner of the crowded cell.

Only Coulson seemed the slightest bit concerned that this was going to fuck up his life, majorly.

The military would never accept him if he was a felon. Skipping class and stealing keys was one thing because they had no consequences outside of detention (and he stayed after school often enough anyways, so his mom didn’t even have to know) but this was a cell.

_A cell._

He was in a jail cell that had _bars,_ and a lock, and disapproving looks on the guards’ faces. He was inside of a life ruining cell that he never would have been in if he would have just stayed at school.

What university would accept him now that he was a heathen to society?

His mother was going to be so disappointed. How as he going to look his father in the eye now, with this on his permeant record?

“You okay?” May ask after she slid down the wall to sit next to him on the cold concrete. She didn’t seem to mind the dust or the shattered remains of his future.

“I’m–”

“So,” Clint cut off throwing himself to the ground next to Coulson. “They aren’t, like, pressing charges or anything. We just gotta have someone pick us up.”

“Oh,” Phil sighed. “That’s, uh, that’s less bad, right?”

“And we’re banned from the mall for a month.”

“I’ve never been banned from anything,” Phil replied disheartened.

Clint and May shared incredulous looks before rolling their eyes. Phil would have been thrilled that they were developing a kind of nonverbal communication, but it was overshadowed his own incredulous thought, “Oh, and you two have been – _Nevermind_ , of course you’ve been banned.”  

 “Man, I was banned from the entire state of Missouri once.”

“How–”

“Who are we going to call?” Natasha asked the crowd, holding up her phone.

“I’ll just call my dad,” Tony shrugged.

“No!” Everyone shouted.

“What? Why not?” Tony asked. “He’d clear all of this up, get the ban lifted and everything.”

“Yeah, and every newspaper in New York will headline with ‘Howard Stark rescued delinquent kids from mall security,” Daisy snorted.

“And I _so_ do not feel like being grounded,” Clint added. “Let’s call Mrs. C.”

 “ _No,_ we’re not calling my mom,” Coulson told them, “Under no uncertain terms are we doing _that.”_

“Yeah,” Tony agreed. “No way. She’d make us run laps, or eat a pack of cigarettes, or something.”

“Fury?” Clint suggested.

 _“NO!”_ Everyone shouted.

“Geez, it was just a suggest–”

“Where’s May?” Phil asked because she was no longer pressed against his side. There was a break in conversation as everybody stopped what they were doing and acknowledged that she truly wasn’t standing next to Coulson.

They almost got whiplash at the sound of the cell door unlocking and May stepping out of it. The door was closed, and the lock snapped back in place before anybody could fully comprehend what happened.

“What the hell?” Ward exclaimed as the officer led her away from the noise and she pulled her phone from her pocket. “We never agree to that.”

“Aye, the lady knows what she’s doing,” Thor defended, smiling brightly at May’s initiative Thor was just as enthralled by May’s awesomeness as May was by his, it was kind of adorable.

“Who is she calling?” Tony questioned. “Everyone she knows is right here! Unless she’s calling her parents from beyond the grave.”

Natasha punched him really hard in the arm and then glared at him in a way that suggested he shut up before she used his intestine for double-dutch.

“Maybe it’s an old contact?” Clint guessed.

“Does she have any?” Natasha asked. Coulson was reminded yet again that every time that every time he learned something about May, there was another hundred things that he didn’t know.

Clint shrugged.

“It could be ninjas,” Tony said.

“Could she be calling Principal Fury?” Simmons asked.

“God, I hope not,” someone muttered as May started talking softly into the receiver, too softly for any of them to make out.

Someone mumbled ‘typical’ but Coulson was too distracted to figure out who because May looked…relaxed, calmer.

Her shoulders lost some of the tension that was always there. He even thought that he heard her laugh once. He has rarely heard her laugh; hell, it took effort to get her to smile. Even more so since the whole S.H.I.E.L.D. file fiasco.

This person, this mysterious person on the phone, got her to laugh and they weren’t even _here_.

It was not jealousy, it wasn’t.

It was concern, how was he supposed to help her if he didn’t know anything about her?

May hung up the phone and walked back over to the cell. As soon as the guard let her back in, she was bombarded with questions.

“Who’d you call?”

“Was it Fury?”

“Was it a spy?”

“Ninjas?”

“Tony, shut up or I _will_ punch you.”

“Are they coming?”

“How long will it be?”

“Who was it?”

 “Everyone,” Phil shouted. “Shut up!”

A hush fell over the crowd.

“It’s taken care of,” She replied, sliding back down to the floor. She wasn’t going to say anything else on the topic. They all knew it.

“Okay,” Phil replied because that someone should. “Okay.”

“Um, no, it’s not,” Tony piped up. “You’re new and all, but it’s a democracy around here. I don’t know how you did it in the ‘field’ or whatever, but it got your parents killed so many think – Jesus Christ!”

“You really should have been expecting that,” Clint said, lacking any sympathy as he observed the fresh hand-print on Tony’s face. “Nat did say she was going to punch you if you didn’t shut up.”

“Tony, apologize,” Bruce said, gesturing to where Coulson was currently glaring daggers from May’s side. “Now.”

She looked uninterested and untouched by his words to everyone but Natasha. She saw the way May’s jaw clenched and the flicker of guilt in her eyes before she slid on her ice mask.

And Natasha had anger in her eyes like the anger in Coulson’s; they had enough of Tony being Tony.

Natasha had snuck around enough corners and listened in on enough conversations to hear May talk about the guilt she felt over her parents’ deaths. She had watched as May crawl her way out of bad memories, and she had watched her never make it out of other.

She had watched as May hollowed herself out and created a no-feeling mask that never slipped or faltered in the same way that Natasha had. She watched and she knew that there was nothing she could do to stop her.

Natasha’s hand reacted before her mind caught up to it. She hadn’t realized she’d slapped Tony until the tingling, stinging sensation was already working its way up her arm.

She was not sorry.

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony waved off Bruce. “I was being a dick. Sorry. I do that sometimes, that’s why I got Romanoff, to quite literally knock some sense into me. Don’t do that again.”

“No promises,” Natasha responded, keeping her anger off her face and out of her voice. No need to draw anything out when May seemed content with just ignoring Tony.

“But seriously, who’d you call?” Tony asked. “Will there be ninjas? Please say its ninjas.”

“Tony, go sit over there,” Bruce snapped. “Before _I_ hit you.”

“Fine, whatever,” He muttered before sulking over to the bars to bug the officer.

“Thanks, Bruce,” Coulson said, nodding his head to him and then Natasha.

“He’s such a dick sometimes,” Clint muttered, dropping down next to Coulson much like he had earlier. “Why don’t you go kick his ass, May? Go one on one, Fight Club style.”

“Tony would have his ass handed to him,” Natasha commented.

“And you know how he doesn’t like being handed things,” Phil added before the three shared a laugh.

Clint and Natasha eventually migrated back over to the rest of the group where they were all huddled together in the far corner whispering to each other.

“You okay?” Phil asked her. May hadn’t said a word since Tony’s outburst.

“Are you?” She asked back, observing the group.

“Think so.”

“Me too.”

They fell back into their comfortable silence as the group’s hush voices rose and then shushed, and then rose again like a wave of gossip.

“You’re on Barton!” Tony exclaimed. “I bet you twenty dollars that the world ends before–”

“SHHH,” The rest of the group shushed him.

“They’re talking about us,” May spoke, seemingly disinterested.

“What?” Phil asked. “About – why – how do you know that?”

“I’ve heard my name three times.”

“That just means that they’re talking about you,” He joked. “Not me.”

“And your name twice.”

“Maybe they’re just telling a story from lunch or something.”

“And Fitz keeps looking over here,” She added. “And they’re whispering.”

“That’s…a good point,” He conceded. “Maybe they’re planning a surprise birthday party. Is your birthday coming up?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“They’re making a bet.”

“Maybe to see which one of us will punch Tony first.”

It was the distant clicking of high heels marching closer that caused every conversation to fade out. With a sense of dread, all eye turned towards the door.

“I wasn’t serious about calling Coulson’s mom,” Clint said in a whisper as the clicking stopped on the other side of the door.

Coulson wasn’t even given a chance to tell Clint that his mother didn’t wear high heels unless she was in court so that obviously wasn’t her (unless May somehow not only had his mother’s number but also managed to drag her out of court, and really, if that was the case they were better off with Fury) before the door opened and...

“You called Mrs. Hand!”

“God, we would have been better off with Fury,” Clint muttered, and Coulson agreed with the sentiment.

“You do know that she made a student spontaneously combust just by looking at them!”

“Tony, that’s not true!”

“Well, aren’t you just a sight for sore eyes,” Hand smirked before tipping her head in May’s direction. “Melinda.”

“Victoria,” She greeted back with a small smile before standing up. Her face dropped to something blank as she weaved her way to the front. Coulson followed.

“What’d you do?” Mrs. Hand asked her. The smile that played along her lips was negated by the serious note in her tone. Mrs. Hand was a rule follower, through and through.

“Did you tell Fury?” May asked in response.

“Not until you give me a reason to,” She answered. “What did you do?”

“Had fun,” May replied with a shrug and a small smile.

It was a good move. It was strategic because Mrs. Hand lost some of her edge. Coulson didn’t know if May was telling the truth or if she just knew how to pull Hand’s string to get them all out of trouble.

He didn’t really care because she said that she had fun. He couldn’t fight the smile that crept onto his face.

Mrs. Hand’s eyes softened, “Did you now?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you wind up in here?”

“Well–”

“Shut up, Tony,” Clint hissed.

“Had too much fun,” May replied cryptically then raised one eyebrow of Mrs. Hand’s unimpressed expression. “Kind of like in Bali with–”

“That’s enough.”

“But is it though?” May asked sardonically. If the situation wasn’t freaky weird already, the rest of them might have cracked a smile.

“It is,” Mrs. Hand said dryly. “Officer, let these _children_ go.”

The security guard, who had been watching them with some degree of amusement, walked up to the cell and unlocked it. “They’re all yours, ma’am.”

“What happened to your face?” Hand asked stopping Tony with a hand on his shoulder as they filed out of the cell. She turned his head towards her to get a better look.

“Natasha happened.”

“You deserve it?”

“Yes.”

Victoria followed the gang out of the office before stopping the group, “I’m not your get-out-of-jail-free card. This was a one-time thing. Got it?”

“Got it,” They replied.

“Good, now Melinda,” She voiced. “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” May replied, rolling her eyes like Phil had done so many times to his mother.

“Don’t roll your eyes at me, young lady.”

“Yes, ma’am,” She smirked, saluting her.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Vic?”

“Try again,” She said sternly, but the smile gave her away.

“Thank you, Mrs. Hand.”

“Now get out of here,” Victoria told them. All the softness in her eyes and the smile hidden back behind the strict mask of the Victoria Hand that they all knew and feared. “I’ll keep your secret, but make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“That was unexpected,” Ward commented when Hand walked away farther into the building.

“How do you know her?” Skye asked.

“I’ve literally have never seen her smile before,” Clint added.

“Guys, what are we doing now?” Coulson cut in. May wasn’t going to answer them; there was no point in asking.

“Did you know she knew Mrs. Hand?” Clint asked Natasha lowly.

“No,” She replied matching his tone. “But it makes sense. She spends a lot of time in Mrs. Hand’s office.”

“Glad she knows her.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Let’s get ice cream,” Fitz threw out.

“Let’s watch a movie,” Tony said at the same time.

“We just watched a movie,” Bruce pointed out as they passed through the empty food court.

“That movie was shit.”

“I want ice cream,” Fitz insisted.

“Yeah,” Tony waved him off. “Cool your jets, St. Patrick.”

“I’m from Scotland!”

“Seriously, Stark,” Simmons cut in, rolling her eyes. “Do you know anything about the United Kingdom?”

“Doctor Who is cool.”

“Yeah,” Fitzsimmons reluctantly agreed.

“So,” Clint said, clapping his hands together to get everyone’s attention. “Ice cream and movies at Fury’s, right?”

“Right,” Natasha responded. “Got it?”

She eyed the crowd in that very, very Natasha way that meant they had better ‘get it’ and get it fast.

Everybody reluctantly did so.

“Then that’s settled.”

 

Coulson sighed first in relief when they exited the mall because seriously, thank the entire freaking universe for Mrs. Hand and her apparent soft spot for May. His dad was just back in town on leave, having his parents pissed off at him because he was arrested by malls security wouldn’t do…like ever.

His second sigh was one in exasperation – out of his parent’s frying pan and right into the fiery pits of Nick Fury’s rage – at the sight of Fury’s SUV. He should have questioned May more when she said she’d handle getting Fitzsimmons, Daisy, and Ward to the mall.

And he totally would have.

Really, he would have, if he hadn’t been too busy being disappointed that May didn’t want to ride in Lola and had purposely distanced herself from him in a rather obvious ‘let-me-shove-Barton-in-your-car-I’ll-even-put-his-seatbelt-on-safety-first!’ kind of way.

But no, there she was, parked right next to Lola and Tony’s Audi.

He shouldn’t have assumed that they were just going to take Daisy’s van.

“So, who’s getting the ice cream and who’s getting the movies?” Tony asked, seemingly unfazed by the fact that Nick Fury’s car was _right there._

“Oh, we’ll get the ice cream,” Fitz exclaimed before going off on a tangent about how all the best ice cream flavors containing the word monkey in it. He was also unfazed by Nick’s car.

What was wrong with these people?

“Uh, May?”

“Yeah,” May answered, examining the large stone pillars outside of the mall.

“Is that Nick’s car?” He asked.

“Yes.” Her eyes slid from the pillar to out over the parking lot.

“Did you steal it?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

“We’ll get the movie then,” Tony said to someone, probably Fitz.

“No way,” Barton protested. “We’ll end up watching Transformers again!”

“I’ll be there,” Natasha pointed out because, seriously, she hated those movies. Stark would sooner lose his hands than pick up one of those.

“You think The Green Lantern movie was _not that bad_ , you can’t be trusted.”

“I, actually, don’t tell me,” Coulson answered finally answered May. “Plausible deniability.”

“Coulson, we’re going with Nat!” Clint shouted a bit too close to him. “May, you got the ice cream handled?”

“Yes.”

“Wait, what?” Coulson asked. “What’s going on?”

Why was Tony getting in his car?

What was happening?

Why did no one care that May apparently _stole_ Nick Fury’s car?

What was wrong with these people?

May was talking; he wasn’t listening to the rest of them.

“Come on, Coulson,” Clint whined as Tony sped off with Bruce, Thor, and Natasha. “They’re going to go pick a movie before we get there.”

“But May–”

“She’s fine,” Clint said, pulling him towards Lola. “Nat likes strawberry so get that.”

“May, are you okay?”

She was certainly acting odd, the tension that left her when she spoke to Mrs. Hand now had her taunt like a bow string. She was distracted like she was spacing out, and that doesn’t often lead to anything good.

“Hmm,” She replied, preoccupied with staring over at her reflection in the movie posters. “Uh, yeah.”

“Are you sure?”

Would she tell him anyways?

“Yes, see you in ten minutes.”

“Bye, Coulson,” Daisy waved amused by his unwillingness to leave. She was still smiling when Clint convinced him to get in the car and drive. “I’m pretty sure you’re his favorite person, May.”

“Oh totally,” Ward agreed.

“Where are we getting ice cream?” Simmons asked.

There was talking, a debate on where to buy ice cream. But that became background noise, like static on a radio, because something was wrong, something felt off.

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and she felt like there were eyes on her, like she was in the crosshairs of a sniper who’d never know her name.

She took a step back until her view would be blocked from the best position spots for a sniper. The mall parking lot was empty, dubiously so, it was an hour past the last bell and the mall was prime hangout zone for the kids at school.

“Let’s go,” She snapped.

“We haven’t picked–”

It wasn’t the gun that gave them away, not the quiet steps that she didn’t hear or the van pulling up behind her. It wasn’t the beginnings of terror dawning across the faces of her friends.

It was the sun reflecting off metal in her peripheral that alerted her to the gun.

 


	18. Build Me Up Buttercup

“Phil, Phil, Philly, Phillip, Phil,” Tony clucked, clicking his tongue with every variation of the name as he strolled through the Action Movie section. Coulson rolled his eyes, choosing to ignore Tony’s longwinded _whatever it was he was doing_ in favor of attempting to figure out why Bruce was suddenly so fidgety.

“Bruce, what’s up?” He asked casually, causing Bruce to jump and spin away from the Rom-Com section to face him.

“Oh, um, it’s not-“ He cut himself off. His brow furrowed as he contemplated what he wanted to say before fixing Phil with a sympathetic look. “I just want you to know that it wasn’t my idea. I’m still against it.”

“Ohhhh-kay,” Phil replied slowly, nodding. “Good. That’s good, that’s great. What are you talking about?”

“Philinda,” Tony cut in over Phil’s shoulder with Fast & Furious until Natasha grabbed it out of his hand and literally threw the DVD.

“Philinda,” Both her and Clint agreed in a matching sigh.

“Philinda?” Phil repeated, a bit afraid to ask.

“For the record, I’m against this,” Bruce piped up, still looking very guilty and slightly like he was already prepared to experience some major second-hand embarrassment. Two things that didn’t really bode well for Phil.

In fact, knowing that Bruce was against it made him feel worse. He was the only sane one.

“Bruce, you traitor!”

“What is Philinda?” Phil asked tiredly against his better judgement.

“Oh, come on, Agent P,” Tony moaned exasperated. “Use your brain! We’ve practically spelled it out for you.”

“Almost literally,” Clint added.

“Phil and Melinda,” He clarified. “ _Why_?”

“Mayson and Coulay sounded stupid.”

“I got that,” He rolled his eyes. Now he had to know what this was leading to. “Why’d you Fitzsimmons us?”

“Because you’re totally smitten,” Natasha replied bluntly. Natasha Romanoff was the only person in the entire universe who could say ‘smitten’ with a straight face.

“I’m not ‘smitten,’” Phil denied over Clint’s _‘really, Tash, smitten?’_

“You are,” Bruce and Tony agreed.

“It’s an 0-8-4, Coulson!” Clint grinned like the Cheshire cat. “You know what that means.”

“That means we don’t know what that means,” Phil replied.

“Object of unknown origins,” Clint sung loudly, earning a glare from a passing employee.

“May is an 0-8-4?”

“No,” Clint shrugged before furrowing his brow. “Well _, yeah_. We don’t know where she’s from, like at all, but no.”

“Your feelings for her are the 0-8-4,” Natasha clarified.

“I don’t have feelings for her!”

“You do!”

“But dude, chill,” Clint said, putting his arm around Phil’s shoulders. “0-8-4’s are awesome, sometimes. The last one was pretty useful.”

“What was that again?” Bruce asked.

“Thor.”

“Speaking of, guys. We need to go find Thor before he picked out something awful again,” Phil replied, trying to get them to walk in the direction of where Thor was elbow deep in the five dollar movie bin.

Seriously, Thor was a fan of foreign films.

The last time he chose a movie, it was something in a language that even Natasha didn’t speak and people were naked half the time. They watched it with Fury. It was weird.

Thor cried through the whole thing. They were all afraid to ask.

Apparently, though, it was a beautiful movie.

That was why Thor was no longer allowed to be in charge of movie night. Which pretty much meant that they often steered their big blond friend away from the movie section because who could say no to that Golden Retriever of a man? No one, that’s who.

Phil tried, “We should go see what he’s looking at, guys. Let’s do that.”

“See!” Clint jumped. “You’re even trying to change the subject. We’re totally right?”

“So, what was your plan?” Phil asked, turning to them. “To actually get us kicked out of a movie theater and arrested?”

“No,” Tony answered. “We wanted you to make your move, which you didn’t.”

“And,” He continued, ignoring the look of incredulous on Phil’s face. “We were going to point out to you that you should, _but_ you glared at everyone who ever thought about sitting next to you two.”

“Can you say jealous boyfriend much?” Clint added.

“You took someone who clearly suffers from PTSD to a movie full of murder and violence,” Coulson defended. “May lashes out when threatened. Of course, I didn’t want you near her. It was safer for all of us. Whose brilliant idea was that anyways?”

“Tony’s,” They all responded immediately.

“My bad.”

“She likes you, Phil,” Natasha told him seriously. “And you clearly like her.”

“She’s my friend.”

Of course, he _liked_ her.

He liked her the first time he met her all that time ago in Mrs. Hand’s office when he thought she was slightly crazy. He thought she was brave, and good, and so very strong. Her laugh was like music and sometimes, only sometimes, he could feel warmth seep out through the cracks in her ice façade. She was rebellious, and quiet, and dangerous, and good; and she made him want to be better.

Of course, he liked her but was it like that?

Was the fact that he was even debating this proving just how much she meant to him?

“Earth to Coulson,” Clint said, bumping into him, holding the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. “Come in Coulson. Breaker, breaker. Or is it ‘beaker, beaker?’ I never know.” 

“How would you know?” Coulson asked because he wasn’t sure that May even wanted to be his friend half the time.

“I mean, I guess, I could _google_ it but – _Oh_. About May?”

“You call her Melinda,” Natasha answered simply. Clint muttered ‘ _duh’_ over Phil’s shoulder.

“So?”

“No one else does.”

“That’s how she introduced herself,” He reasoned.

 _Yeah,_ sure, he was the only one who called her Melinda. It wasn’t like she told him not to call her that though. Maybe it was something as simple as not wanting to correct people when they called her by her last name or not wanting to correct him when he calls her by her first.

“And she calls you Phil.”

“That’s _my_ name.”

It was not unusual for friends to call each other by their first names, just because she seemed allergic to them doesn’t mean everyone else was (and she almost always called Clint by his first name so what does that say about you, _Natasha?_ ).

It didn’t mean anything.

“If she likes me she would have told me,” He pointed out, and then told Clint, “No, you already have the Lord of the Rings extended editions, put those back.”

“Coulson,” Natasha said in that voice that said she thought he was a moron and was about to drop some knowledge on him. She rolled her eyes too so apparently, she thought it was obvious as well. “May never went to a real school. I doubt that she spent a lot of time around people her age.”

“I doubt she spent time around anyone but her parents and S.H.I.E.L.D. assholes,” Clint cut in. “You’ve seen how flighty she is.”

“She’s–”

“Been through a lot,” Natasha finished. “Case in point, she likes you.”

“She would have said _something._ ”

“No, she wouldn’t have,” Natasha replied smoothly, taking Home Alone out of Clint’s hand and putting it back on the shelf.

 _‘Like she didn’t tell you about the broken arm or Garrett’s harassment,’_ his mind supplied viciously. _‘Like how she only told you things when she didn’t have a choice.’_

But this was different than that because this was about feelings and Melinda told him about how she thought she was broken, and scared, and how she missed her parents. And he had told her things that he would never tell anyone.

She would tell him something as important as liking him, right?

“How many boys do you think she’s been around? She’s probably never even kissed a boy. She’s not–”

“I’m not even sure if _you_ have ever kissed anyone before,” Clint said, eyeing him suspiciously. Tony and Bruce stopped trying to pry The Gremins from Thor’s hands to turn and look at him curiously. Thor, on the other hand, continued his dig to the bottom of the bin.

“Have you?”

His face was not going to go red because of Clint Barton and Tony Stark. Especially not about something as trivial and stupid as this.

“Yes!” He exclaimed because he might not let himself be embarrassed about this but he sure as hell was going to be indigent. “Yes! Camilla from Spanish club! And Aubrey, the cellist. I dated her for two years. We kissed!”

“We’re not even sure that she was a real person,” Tony said, shaking his head.

“You sat behind her in World History last year,” Coulson told him.

“I don’t believe that’s true.”

“You know what? Good for you, Coulson,” Clint responded, patting him on the back. “Now kiss May.”

“I’m not taking advantage of someone.”

“If May didn’t want you to kiss her, she’d let you know,” Natasha informed simply.

“Violently,” Clint added.

“Ward and the Spice Girls are currently figuring out if May is all Coulson-crazy,” Tony jumped in, waving his phone in Coulson’s face. “And if the mission is a no-go, they’d text. And there are no messages, so she apparently is.”

“Guys,” Coulson breathed out. “May could be…not straight, you know?”

“Of course, she could,” Natasha replied nonplused.

“No one is saying that she couldn’t be just–” Clint added.

“That she only has eyes for you.”

“Yeah, the rest of us are like extras in a movie. You’re, like, Brad freaking Pitt.”

“She could be asexual,” He pointed out.

“I–” Clint began and then paused. “That’s true. I didn’t think of that.”

“Just trust me,” Tony said, cutting in as Clint mauled over Coulson’s words. “She likes you. It’s obvious.”

“Last time you said that I should trust you, the school had to be evacuated.”

“And you got a four day weekend. You’re welcome.”

“She does like you,” Natasha told him softly, sincerely.

“She’s probably going to ask _you_ out because she’s going to be tired of waiting for you to get a clue,” Clint joked.

“Did you say Daisy and Fitzsimmons are figuring out if May liked me?” He asked unbelieving.

“Yeah,” Clint laughed. “We flipped a coin.”

“There might have been cheating,” Bruce muttered under his breath.

“Those poor souls.”

“Oh, nah, I’m sure it’s going great.”

“Smashing!” Tony added, imitating Simmons’ accent.


	19. Chapter 19

This mission was stupid.

Honestly, who thought of this and why did he agree to go along with it?

It wasn’t like he was some emotionally deficient boy that didn’t understand basic human emotions like Daisy would say if he told them all exactly how stupid this plan was. If he told them that this was literally the dumbest plan he’d ever heard of and he was embarrassed to be a part of it.

This was magnificently stupid and not thought out at all, they were supposed to be the geniuses not him, why couldn’t they see that?

And it wasn’t like he didn’t think that Coulson and May weren’t all googly-eyed for each other. It wasn’t that he didn’t think that the only reason they weren’t the sickly sweet, hand holding, voted prom king and queen type of couple was because they were too clueless to pick up on it, because he did. He totally did.

Everyone thought that.

Hence, this dumb and not thought out mission.

He was all for playing the role he was given. That was kind of his _thing_ , to just go with it, whatever _it_ might have been. He was uncomfortable with the plan and the execution, and all of this was verging in on some really awkward territory.

He was, in no way, looking forward to ever having to explain to Coulson that he had seen his girlfriend naked, _but,_ he was willing to burn that bridge if they ever got to it.

The mission, the goal, was to figure out what was going on in May’s head. It was _literally_ to find out if she was all lovely-dovey under her tough exterior for Coulson’s geeky sweater vest, and to get ice cream because that was apparently essential for them to do all of this.

This was no way to do a mission.

Missions don’t involve ice cream and you don’t _ever_ discuss your mission when your mission was _right there._

“How do we even go about this?” Simmons whispered, looking over her shoulder to where May was not paying them any attention. In fact, they were lucky that May found her surroundings more interesting than her friend.

“We just go to Wal-Mart,” Fitz replied, like it was obvious. “Simple.”

“Not that,” she retorted, smiling her _‘of Fitz’_ smile. “About _May_. It’s not like she’s just going to tell us.”

 _‘Of course, she wasn’t,’_ Grant thought. It was a stupid plan. You know what they knew about Melinda May? Like, in the entire time they have known her?

She had S.H.I.E.L.D. parents – via leaked government files and a prank.

She was the reason John Garrett no longer went to MHS – determined from evidence. Bruce Banner does not haul off and punch someone in the face for no reason.

She was pretty much a ninja – demonstrated.

She had a great body – personal knowledge; cannot be shared.

You know what else they also knew?

She liked Phil Coulson.

Everyone knew she liked Coulson, everyone _but_ Phil Coulson.

She wouldn’t say it. Not to them. Just like she wouldn’t say what happened to her parents in Bahrain or where that scar on her shoulder came from.

The _only_ person she would ever possibly tell would be Coulson.

This was an exercise in pointlessness.

Time Wasting 101.

And they were all passing with flying colors.

“Ward, you’re frowning,” Daisy observed, crossing her arms and raising a questioning eyebrow at him because this was, after all, the brainchild of her and Stark. His eyes flickered over from Daisy’s annoyance with him to May’s ridged stance. She was tense.

“This is stupid.”

Her eyes were scanning the parking lot once again before she inconspicuously took a step back and then another. The others didn’t seem to notice but he did. Something was up, or at least May thought so.

“We’re just going to talk to her,” Daisy rolled her eyes. “What could go wrong?”

“She could walk away,” Simmons answered the clearly rhetorical question.

“She could kill us,” Fitz replied at the same time as Simmons. Ward wondered, not for the first time, if there was a rule that said geniuses had to miss all social cues and if there was an ingrained inability to plan missions ahead of time in their DNA.

“Possibly everything because you said, ‘what could go wrong?” Simmons added.

“Exactly,” He replied, straight-faced. “That’s what I’m imagining with this frown.

“Well, your frown will be on record. And she’s not going to kill us, Fitz.”

‘ _Good,’_ Ward thought. He could rub it in their faces when this crashed and burned, and he was proven to be undoubtedly right.

“She could if she wanted to,” Fitz laughed in a way that suggested he wasn’t completely sold on the idea that she didn’t want to kill them all.

“Let’s go,” May snapped, standing next to a pillar. Her voice was hard and commanding, barring no argument and far too intense for the situation.

 He was right, something was up. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

“We haven’t figured–”

The man in the black uniform came out of nowhere, appearing like an apparition from behind the closest stone pillar behind May. Before any of them could react, could reach for her, or call out, or prepare for the horrid sound and images that came with a headshot at that close of proximity, May had him.

She grabbed the gun over the barrel, like her mother had always told her not to do before she got her fingers blown off. Pulling the gun to the left, she flipped the gunman over onto the ground, disarming him in the process. Another solider dressed in black Kevlar with a gun and a thick bulletproof vest appeared from behind the pillar.

How long had they been hiding?

She should have noticed them sooner, she thought as she grabbed the gun.

She just wanted to watch a movie, she thought as she jabbed her elbow into his nose, and twisted the gun.

Just one freaking day, she thought, gritting her teeth around the building anger, dodging a wild punch from the disoriented soldier. She debated breaking his nose before punching the man in the stomach.

She was sick of this. He doubled over.

Sick of them. She slammed her knee into his face.

Sick of everything. The soldier fell to the ground.

There was a hand on her shoulder, roughly gripping her before slipping away.

When May whirled around in her fighting stance, they flinched.

She dropped her fist immediately. She looked at the rest of her team – Coulson’s team, no friends, _Christ,_ they were children, they needed protecting.

 She found another soldier with Ward’s strong arms wrapped around his neck. Her gaze jumped from Ward, deciding she’d figure out how she felt about that later, to see if the rest were okay.

Fitz, Simmons, and Daisy looked to be in various phases of confusion, ranging from awe to fight to ‘what the actual hell,’ but otherwise unharmed. May let out a breath she didn’t know she was holding.

The relief was short lived, her head whipped around to the sound of squealing tires as an unmarked van skidded to a halt in the no parking zone. She could see out of the corner of her eye that Ward positioned the solider in front of him.

He was going to use him as a shield.

She ordered Fitzsimmons and Skye behind a pillar with one pointed glance before she yanked the solider out of Ward’s grip and knocked him out with the handle of her gun.

“Do you know how to use this?” She asked, handing the gun over to him before he could answer.

“Yeah,” He answered as she checked the van. The soldiers were filing out.

“Get them out of here,” She ordered, checking her own stolen gun. “Now!”

She could hear the footsteps of half a dozen men and somewhere in the distance the sound of speeding tires over speed bumps; she knew they were for her.

Ward hadn’t moved.

Things were going to get bad quickly. The least she could do was get them out of the line of fire.

“Now!” She shouted, pushing him. “Do as I say.”

“Sorry,” He smirked at her, radiating calmness.

She narrowed her eyes, feeling her own painful heart beat and the vise grip her anxiety had on her lungs. Calm was not something you should do feeling in this situation, not when Fitzsimmons were fourteen, and here, and in danger of being killed or tortured. Not when Daisy, or any civilian that might walk through those doors (though she suspected the unusual emptiness of the mall was because they cleared the place beforehand to avoid bad press, governmental most likely) ran the risk of being shot.

Not in this situation, not calm, not ever.

“I forgot I was working with the Cavalry,” He drawled, tipping his head towards her with a grin.

She counted six. They left the van running so at least seven. The second van was there now. She could hear the static feedback over communicators, so S.T.R.I.K.E. team most likely.

Ward was messing with her, with the smile, and the nickname, and the calm. It was supposed to be funny. It wasn’t.

“Don’t ever call me that,” She bit out as he rounded the corner, smile still on his face. She turned around as the door to the second van slide open. Planting her feet steady on the ground, she raised her hands in the air, gun held up.

There were ten soldiers, not heavily armed but all in combat gear.

“Is this because of the car?” She asked with a smirk playing along her lips and a confidence she did not feel. She missed her protective leather, but Clint’s purple hoodie and Natasha’s old jeans did the trick.

She wouldn’t go down without a fight, they didn’t know that.

Not when the soldier closest to her, yanked on her arm and tried to twist it behind her back.

Not when the gun went off and he fell to the ground before her.

But they did when their bullets that were bullets and bullets that weren’t bullets missed her and when she snapped one of their arms.

She wished she had a knife.


End file.
